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THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
F. H. JACOB1 



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A THESIS 

Accepted by the University Faculty of Cornell University 

for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, May, 1902 



BY 

ALEXANDER W. CRAWFORD, A.M. 



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CONTENTS. 

Page. 

CHAPTER I. 
Life and Writings I 

CHAPTER II. 
Jacobi's Standpoint and Problem 17 

CHAPTER III. 
The Doctrine of Immediacy 33 

CHAPTER IV. 
Jacobi's Realism, or His Doctrine of Actuality ' 51 

CHAPTER V. 

Jacobi's Metaphysics: His Theism and Philosophy of Religion 65 

Conclusion 85 

Bibliography 87 

Index 89 



111 



CHAPTER I. 
LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

Jacobi lived in one of the most stirring political and literary 
periods of German history, and in the most important period of 
modern philosophy. He lived through the era of the French 
Revolution and of the Napoleonic Wars, and was a contemporary 
of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing in literature, and of Kant, Fichte, 
Schelling, and Hegel in philosophy. In addition to the contemporary 
influences which these names represent, the effects of earlier move- 
ments were still manifest in many ways. The religious influence of 
the Reformation was continued in Pietism, under the shadow of 
which he passed his earlier years. This early training gave a de- 
cidedly religious tone to his life, and to all his philosophical work. 

It is probable, too, that this movement had much to do with the 
general reaction against the rigid rationalism of the Aufklarung, 
which set in when Jacobi was a young man. This tendency found 
its clearest expression in Hamann's Gefiihlsphilosophie. It was un- 
doubtedly this movement which led Jacobi to extend sympathy and 
help to the new Romanticism, with its simpler and healthier views 
of the world and of human life. Never before had literary and his- 
torical criticism assumed such importance ; for it was largely through 
these, in the first instance, that the strength of Romanticism was 
expressed. Mysticism, too, was still alive and an active force in 
society, and especially in religion. Jacob Boehme, indeed, had given 
it some standing in philosophy, and it was now destined to have a 
much larger place. This was due to the fact that it had passed 
beyond the stage of physical excitation, and of a mere rule of life, 
such as it was in Eckhart and Tauler and to some extent in Boehme, 
and had adopted a rationalistic procedure. An intellectuelle An- 
schauung had taken the place of the earlier emotional intuition ; and 
this had raised mysticism from the position of a mere individualistic 
rule of life to that of a philosophical doctrine or universal principle. 
This Jacobi eventually developed further than any of his prede- 
cessors. 

His Life. 1 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Diisseldorf on 

1 The account of Jacobi's life is taken chiefly from Zirngiebl, Jacobi' s Leben, 
Dichten und Denken (Vienna, 1867), from Adamson's article "Jacobi" in the 
I I 



2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

the 25th of January, 1743. He was the second son of a wealthy 
merchant, who was engaged in the sugar industry. His father was 
a strong Protestant, and the boy was brought up in that faith. 
Jacobi seems to have possessed from early youth a deep religious 
sense and a certain mystical tendency. Referring to himself as the 
author of Allwill, he says : " Therefore, already as a youth, the man 
was a visionary, a phantast, a mystic." 1 In a similar connection, he 
refers to Pietism, and acknowledges its influence upon him. 2 It is 
related of him that, as a boy, instead of playing with other boys, 
he would often stay in the house and converse with a pious old 
maid-servant of the family. As a mere child he thus showed an 
interest in religion, and even in the solution of certain religious prob- 
lems. At the age of eight or nine he had intuitive views of immor- 
tality which ever remained with him. 3 In Allwill he tells of an ex- 
perience of rapture, a sort of mystical experience, which he had in 
early life. 4 His faculty of intuition was thus very strong. He says 
that in early life he could not realize the existence of anything he 
could not intuit, or place before his senses in imagination. This 
reminds one of Berkeley, who could not realize the actuality of any- 
thing which he could not individualize. 5 

Jacobi's father intended him to follow a commercial career, and 
with this end in view sent him, at the age of sixteen, to Geneva, to 
complete his studies. Here he remained four years. He had spent 
his early life under the influence of religion (Pietism), but at Geneva 
he first came in contact with philosophy. Sensationalism was the 
dominant philosophy there at that time, and he first approached the 
subject from that side. This led him to see an opposition between 
philosophy (or science) and faith, which he never afterward could 
reconcile. It became the business of his whole later life to try to 
adjust, though not to reconcile, their respective spheres. 6 The in- 
fluence of the empirical school was, however, negative. He grasped 
the enthusiasm rather than the theories of its adherents, and was 
most moved by that which was illogical in them, but which he felt 
was most true to the realities of life. His teachers here were Bonnet 
and Le Sage ; and he also read Rousseau, Voltaire, and others. But 
neither the scepticism of Voltaire nor the sentimental deism of 

Encyclopedia Britannica, and from Hedge, Prose Writers of Germany (Philadel- 
phia, 1870). 

1 Jacobi, Werke, I, p. xii. 

2 1, P. 33- 

3 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 4. 

4 1, P. 24. 

5 Cf. Fraser, Selections from Berkeley, p. 3. 

6 Piinjer, History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion, Eng. trans., p. 621. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 3 

Rousseau appealed much to him. He was driven rather to seek a 
philosophy which should not only acknowledge God and things 
divine — supersensible truth — but one which should also have a place 
for a God and a faith, as living, ever-present, realities in life. 

After finishing his course at Geneva, he married, in 1764, Betty 
von Clermont, a lady of Aix-la-Chapelle, who was very beautiful 
and accomplished. In addition to " her great personal and mental 
attractions," she brought him considerable wealth. She seems to 
have been an excellent woman, highly esteemed by all who knew 
her. Goethe, in his Memoirs, speaks of her in terms of praise. 

Jacobi now took his place at the head of the mercantile house 
which was handed over to him by his father. But this did not prove 
congenial to him, as he had no taste for business. He therefore soon 
betook himself to literary and philosophical work, which was better 
suited to his meditative disposition. He accepted, however, an elec- 
tion to membership in the Council of Juliers and Berg, in which 
connection he became famous for his financial ability and his zeal 
in social reform. His interest in social and political questions is 
shown by his writings on these subjects, which constitute the sixth 
volume of his collected works. 

Jacobi and Wieland founded a new literary journal, Der Merkur, 
in which were published some of his earliest writings, including, 
among other things, his Allwills Brief sammlung in 1774. In 
1779 he published Woldemar, a philosophical novel of no great 
merit, though interesting as a statement of his earliest views, and as 
an illustration of his philosophical method. His temperament, as 
seen in these early works, is literary rather than philosophical ; he 
is satisfied with reaching truth by a sort of intuition, and does not 
seem to demand a complete rationalization of principles. He was 
familiar, however, with philosophy, past and present, and saw as 
well as anyone the short-comings of the current speculations, though 
at this time he could offer no deep philosophical contribution. He 
saw that life was larger than the current philosophy could provide 
for, and that theory had not attained to the fulness of faith. 1 
Without critical examination, then, he took the principle of faith, 
which he saw had so large a place in religion and in life, and tried 
to give it the dignity of a philosophical principle ; though in his 
later years he examined it more carefully, and substituted an intel- 
lectual element for the feeling element which characterized his first 
presentation of the subject. 

In the same year (1779) in which he published Woldemar, he 
became a member of the privy council at Munich. He proved 

1 Cf. Lotze, who said that life was larger than logic. 



4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

energetic ; " but the exposure of the abuses of the Bavarian system 
of customs was attended with consequences which rendered that 
post uncomfortable." 1 He therefore returned to Pempelfort, where 
he applied himself with exclusive devotion to literature. The death 
of his wife broke in upon the peacefulness of his labors, and threw 
a gloom over his remaining years. He kept up his home at Pempel- 
fort, however, and during the next few years produced some of his 
most important writings, among which was his Brief e ilber die 
Lehre Spinozas, 1785, in letters to Moses Mendelssohn. This first 
brought him into relation with contemporary philosophy, as it was 
his first truly philosophical work. It was called forth by a con- 
versation with Lessing, in which the latter declared that he knew 
of no philosophy which could properly be called such, except 
Spinoza's. This led Jacobi to make an extended and careful study 
of Spinoza, which resulted in the work above mentioned. This 
celebrated conversation has been preserved for us by Jacobi. 2 

In 1789 Jacobi published a second edition of his work on Spinoza, 
greatly enlarged, and with added appendixes. In this we find the 
first clear statement of his opposition to a philosophy of demon- 
stration, as distinguished from a philosophy of faith, which he 
avowed. He thus identified himself with the Gefiihlsphilosophie of 
Hamann and Herder. This put him at once in opposition to the 
leading philosophers of the time, including Mendelssohn, who was 
looked up to as chief. These all misunderstood him, and thought 
he was trying to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion 
of unreasoning belief. They called him an enemy of reason, a 
Pietist, and even a Jesuit in disguise. So careless was their ex- 
amination of his writings that they thought he advocated a doctrine 
of unreasoning faith and dogmatic authority. 

In reply to this charge he published a dialogue entitled David 
Hume ilber den Glanben, oder Idealismiis und Realismus. In the 
preface he protested against being regarded as an advocate of a blind 
faith, and as an enemy of science and philosophy. 3 He endeavored 
also to vindicate his use of the words ' faith ' and ' belief/ by showing 
that these terms had been used by eminent writers, especially by David 
Hume, in the sense in which he himself was now using them, and 
that there were no other words to express the immediate cognition 
of facts, as opposed to the construction of inferences. In an appendix 
to the second edition of this work, he first expressed himself on 

1 Hedge, Prose Writers of Germany, p. 206. 

2 IV, a, pp. 53 ff. For an English translation of the conversation, see Sime, 
Lessing, Vol. II, pp. 300 ff. 
3 II, P. 4- 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 5 

Kantianism, and showed his intense keenness of criticism. He here 
set forth his realism in opposition to the Kantian philosophy, which 
he interpreted as subjective idealism. 

At the outbreak of the war with France, which followed close upon 
the French Revolution, Jacobi left Dtisseldorf, and lived for nearly 
two years in Holstein, the native province of his father. While 
there he made the acquaintance of Reinhold ; and from there he 
published, in 1801, his first important work on Kantianism, Ueber 
das Untemehmen des Kriticismus die Vernunft zu Verstande zu 
bringen. In this he developed more fully than in the appendix to 
David Hume his position with reference to what he thought to be 
the subjective idealism of the Kantian system. 

It was while living here that he was accused of atheism at Jena, 
probably on account of his partial acceptance of Kant's Dialectic. 
In order, then, to set himself and his philosophy in the proper light 
with reference to theology, he published an apologetic letter, Jacobi an 
Fichte, in which he tried to define his position with precision. Noth- 
ing was further from him than atheism. Instead of being its sup- 
porter and defender, he was its most determined opponent. All his 
efforts were directed to establish theism ; and the principal charge he 
made against Spinozism was that it was atheistic and fatalistic. 

Soon after returning to his home at Diisseldorf, he received a 
call in 1804 to the new Academy of Science just founded at Munich ; 
and as he had lost part of his paternal fortune through a brother- 
in-law, he was induced to accept the position. In 1807 he was made 
president of the Academy, and remained in that position for four 
years. While there he published his last philosophical work, Von 
gottlichen Dingen, which he directed chiefly against Schelling. The 
latter made a bitter reply, which Jacobi never noticed, though the 
controversy was carried on by others, chiefly Fries and Baader. 

In 1 81 2 he retired from the presidency, and began to prepare a 
collected edition of his works, but died, March 10, 1819, before he 
had completed the task. The work was continued, however, by 
Koppen, and was completed in 1825. It was published in six vol- 
umes, the fourth volume containing three parts. The second volume 
contains an Introduction by Jacobi which is at the same time the 
best introduction to his philosophy, and the most succinct and lucid 
statement he ever made of his general position. It is to this edi- 
tion of his works that all references are made in this monograph. 1 

Jacobi was not a philosopher of set purpose. His first writings 

1 The paging of the Vorrede of the 1812 edition varies in different copies, though 
the body of the works is the same. 



6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

contained merely an implicit philosophy of life, and it was only 
later that he was driven to an endeavor to render that philosophy 
explicit. He was a busy man of affairs for many years, and his 
writings were but occasional treatises, — " written rhapsodically and 
at grasshopper gait," as he says, and, for the most part, in the form 
of letters, dialogues, and romances. " It was never my object," he 
says, " to construct a system for the schools ; my writings sprang 
from my innermost life, they followed an historical course; in a 
certain way I was not the author of them, not with my own will so, 
but under compulsion of a higher and irresistible power." 1 His 
philosophy, more than that of almost any other philosopher, was 
primarily his personal view of life, and only secondarily did it be- 
come a system of principles. 

Jacobi seems to have been a man of most admirable personal 
qualities. He had very deep social feelings, as is evidenced by the 
fact that he made his mansion at Pempelfort a resort for literary 
men. He was also intensely religious, though there seems to be no 
evidence that he interested himself very greatly in any contemporary 
ecclesiastical affairs. Love for God and man went together in him, 
and were the united cause of all his philosophical thought. 

We shall endeavor to trace very briefly the influences which met 
in him, and which went to shape his character, and to give content 
and form to his philosophy. 

Pietism. The deep religious movements of Germany have nearly 
all been associated with, or have been the outcome of, some form 
of mysticism. There were mystics such as Tauler and Eckhart 
before the Reformation, from whom the chief inspiration of that 
movement came. Luther himself was a mystic, and drew much 
inspiration from Staupitz. Then came Boehme, one of the most 
profound thinkers ever found in the ranks of the common 
people. His mysticism was broad and deep, and he was sufficiently 
philosophical to give some real character to his thought. The 
movement of which the Pietism of Jacobi's day was the product 
was begun by Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705), and was at first 
a movement within the Lutheran Church. It took the form of a 
protest against the formalism which had been developed within the 
Church, and which threatened to destroy its real spirit. Its chief 
characteristics, therefore, were deep spirituality, an emphasis upon 
experience rather than knowledge, upon immediate intuition rather 
than mediate thought, and upon the importance of the individual. 

1 Quoted by Schwegler, History of Philosophy, Eng. trans, by Stirling, p. 249. 

2 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 41-2. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 7 

It was therefore " rather a religious mood than a form of thought." 1 

Spener also placed much emphasis upon conversion, or the re- 
newal of the natural man by the spiritual. 2 This naturally meant 
an antagonism between the natural and the spiritual, — an antagon- 
ism which Jacobi inherited and which always remained a very 
marked feature of his view of the world. In the same way, the 
other features of Pietism, and of mysticism generally, entered 
deeply into his thought. To the end he remained strongly individ- 
ualistic or empirical, valuing direct and immediate intuitions above 
the richest content of mediated thought, and was never able to over- 
come the opposition between the natural and the spiritual man, or 
between nature and mind. This will be seen in his permanent dual- 
ism between knowledge of mechanical nature (or science) and 
knowledge of the supersensible or spiritual world, which he chose 
to call philosophy. 

Such a view of the world of nature and man undoubtedly com- 
plicates the philosophical problem, but it is nevertheless the basis of 
all true spiritual or religious life. It was the source of the truest 
and deepest life of the church, and furnished the only true experi- 
ential basis of the doctrinal aspect of Christianity. This cannot pre- 
cede, but must follow upon true religious life, and it was from this 
sort of life that the doctrines of the Reformation historically sprang, 
— those doctrines which mark the spiritual emancipation of our 
modern world. Under these influences Jacobi spent the earlier 
years of his life, and it was from these that he drew his conception 
of the world and of life. 

Sensationalism. This was the first philosophy which Jacobi read 
at all carefully. Previous to his term at Geneva he had read but 
little, — only what the ordinary school-boy reads. But at Geneva he 
came in touch with French Sensationalism, through the Encyclo- 
pedia, which at that time had its stronghold there. 3 Then began his 
serious study of philosophy. Le Sage was his teacher, and Jacobi 
says that his acquaintance with him marks an epoch in his life, and 
that his year with him was the most fruitful he ever spent. 4 

It was a strange contrast, — a Pietist in the midst of the material- 
istic movement of the time, 5 and one of the most thoroughgoing 
materialistic movements in the entire history of philosophy. Jacobi 
was thus led into very serious mental and spiritual struggles, and it 

1 Wilde, F. H. Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism, p. n. 

2 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 

3 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 5-6. 
* II, pp. 182-3. 

5 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 6. 



8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

is probably due to the fact of being thrown on his own spiritual re- 
sources that he had his " fruitful year." He was forced to a more 
careful and positive study of the spirit than ever before, 1 or than was 
at all usual with young men of his years. He studied Le Sage, Bonnet, 
Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Durand; though he seems to have 
been most in sympathy with Rousseau. 2 The others furnished him 
little positive material for his own thought. He seems to have been 
satisfied with their general philosophical method ; for it is only their 
results which he criticises, and this only when they come into the 
sphere of the supersensible. He seems never to have called in 
question the validity of their method in the sphere of what we now 
call the science of nature. In this field, however, he never showed 
any interest, — the things of the spirit were his only attraction. The 
method of this school he accepted as the only method for exact sci- 
ence; and as the whole procedure was to him very barren, he op- 
posed it only when it was carried over into the region of spirit. It 
was thought by some that he opposed science as such; but it was 
only the scientific method in philosophy which encountered his oppo- 
sition. A science of nature he thought quite possible, though he 
left it for others to pursue; but a science of spirit he considered in 
the nature of things forever impossible. 

The science of the sensationalists daily taught him that all things 
were idle and empty, 3 and that there was nothing substantial but 
matter. But this could not satisfy his soul; for his faith in God, 
and love, and virtue, which he had held from his youth up, was 
more to him than this, and could not be explained away. In the 
field of the sensible, however, the science of the sensationalists 
seemed to him to be indisputable, while faith in God seemed equally 
indisputable in the field of the spiritual. This left him forever with 
a discord between head and heart, though to him " the stirrings of 
the pious soul were of far more importance than the cognitions of 
the understanding." 4 

Jacobi may have found reason for such a dualism even among the 
sensationalists themselves. For instance, Bonnet did not accept the 
coarse materialism of the Encyclopaedia, though he was a Sensa- 
tionalist. He did not say, as others did, that thought was motion, 
but that motion in the body was the occasion of thought in the im- 
material soul. Moreover, he regarded the mind as substantial, and 

1 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 6. 

2 Falckenberg, History of Modem Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 310. 

3 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 43. 
4 Punjer, op. cit., p. 621. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 9 

proved it from the unity of consciousness. 1 So that even within the 
school itself there were indications which might point Jacobi to the 
view which he developed, — a dualism between head and heart, be- 
tween science of the sensible and faith in the supersensible world. 
Instead of offering any thorough-going criticism of their method 
in general, the only way he saw was to endeavor to limit it to the 
field of the science of nature. How this affected his own view of 
nature, and of the value of natural science, we shall see later. We 
shall also see that it constitutes his own greatest philosophical limi- 
tation. 

Aufklarung. After his return from Geneva to his native land, 
Jacobi found himself under the influence of the Enlightenment, both 
as a form of culture, and as a philosophy of life and of reality. 
The earlier dogmatism of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff did not in- 
fluence him until a later time; but the dogmatic rationalism of the 
Aufklarung, though an outcome of the earlier dogmatism, was a 
factor in the life of his time, and was, indeed, the prevailing type 
of thought. Although looking for its speculative support to Leib- 
niz and Wolff, this was its least important side; it concerned itself 
more with the practical affairs of life. " The basis of the Enlight- 
enment of the eighteenth century was given in the general features 
of a secular view of life, as they had been worked out during the 
Renaissance by the fresh movements in art, religion, politics, and 
natural research." 2 Its theology was deism, and its religion was 
rationalism, — it " made a negative reduction of what was positive 
in religion to a so-called Religion of Reason." 3 It "enthroned 
' sound common sense ' as the supreme arbiter, flouted all mysteries, 
discredited the deeper experiences, ignored the graver questions of 
the soul, and bounded its views by the narrow horizon of every-day 
life." 4 It thus exalted the knowing reason of the individual, and 
set -itself up as the supreme arbiter of all things. It thought it 
found within itself all that was necessary for knowledge or for life. 
Its God played no real part in life, but was merely the speculative 
principle from which all things proceed, and was accordingly com- 
pletely transcendent. 

Such a movement could have only a negative influence upon the 
very positive spirit of Jacobi; for he was opposed to it from the 
very outset. Its view of God, its denial of mysteries, its quite 
unpoetic and rationalistic view of life, were repulsive to him, and 

1 Windelband, History of Philosophy, Eng. trans, by Tufts, p. 458. 

2 Ibid., p. 438. 

3 Piinjer, op. cit., p. 650. 

4 Hedge, Hours with German Classics, p. 194. 



10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

entirely unsatisfactory. It left man no mystery to himself ; it really 
cut off as illusions all his deeper spiritual experiences and yearnings, 
and left him with only an ideal which was ' of the earth, earthy.' 
And though at one with this movement in its belief in a personal 
God, he could not, however, accept the artificial and mechanical 
schism which it made between God and the world. He held that 
God and the world were organic to one another, and that a vital rela- 
tion must subsist between the two. This relation he conceived it 
the chief business of his philosophy to show. No positive contri- 
bution to Jacobi's thought can therefore be attributed to the Auf- 
klarung; but it stirred him up to opposition, and to a more explicit 
formulation of his own peculiar philosophy. 

Spinozism. Shortly after Jacobi's return from Geneva he first 
came in contact with Spinozism. In 1763 the Berlin Academy prize 
for an essay " On Evidence in Metaphysical Knowledge " was 
awarded to Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi greeted the essay with 
great pleasure, but was disappointed to find that it was little more 
than a restatement of the old dogmatic arguments for the existence 
of God. He regarded this type of method as looking back to Leib- 
niz and Spinoza, — to their mathematical method of demonstration. 
But Jacobi had learned to look on things with the eye of the Em- 
piricist, and distrusted all demonstrative methods. His conception 
of philosophy as faith, or belief, or intuition, had begun to take form 
in his thought. 

But it was not till after his famous conversation with Lessing in 
1780 that he gave any very careful consideration to Spinoza. Then 
for some years he carefully studied that philosopher, and in 1785 
gave the results of his study to the world in the form of the 
Brief e iiber die Lehre Spinozas, addressed to Mendelssohn. He 
found himself completely opposed to Spinoza, and to all philos- 
ophy of that type. The method of demonstration appeared to him 
to be its chief characteristic, — an attempt to deduce the fullness of 
the universe from one primary principle, in Spinoza's case the prin- 
ciple of substance. 

The science of mathematics was in Spinoza's day developing rap- 
idly. Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton had made wonderful dis- 
coveries, and the atmosphere of the whole educated world was 
largely mathematical. Mathematics appeared to be the true type 
of science, and it was thought that all true science must conform to 
this model, as the only way in which results could be exact, or could 
be proved. Modern inductive methods had not yet come into vogue, 
though Bacon had some time previously called attention to induc- 
tion, and had to some extent outlined its methods. It was but nat- 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. II 

ural, then, that the philosophical sciences should endeavor to adopt 
the mathematical method. It was not thought that the difference 
in subject-matter called for any difference in method of treatment. 
Accordingly, Spinoza proposed to himself the task of demonstrating 
Ethics in geometrical order. Starting out with the concept of Sub- 
stance, with its attributes and modes, as the geometer does with the 
concept of the triangle with its sides and angles, he endeavored to 
deduce, or demonstrate the entire universe, including right and duty. 

This method determined by opposition that which Jacobi should 
adopt. The mathematical method he thought proper enough for 
the sciences of nature; for, to him, nature was mechanical. More- 
over, he always associated demonstration with a mechanical method ; 
for, to him, demonstration was mathematical, not logical. But, 
since he viewed man as a free personality, and spirit as something 
radically different from nature, he could not see that in this sphere 
mathematics could be applicable in any way. And since spirit did 
not admit of exact measurements, therefore a philosophy, of spirit 
could not be a mathematical, or an exact, or a demonstrative science. 
An attempt to apply the exact method to supersensible objects, he 
thought, would inevitably lead to a denial of the very objects with 
which it started. This was shown clearly in the case of Spinoza 
and others, who started with God as substance, but came at last to 
such a view of God as denied any conscious personality, and was, 
indeed, nothing but atheism and fatalism. This led Jacobi to the 
opinion that a demonstrative system of philosophy was impossible; 
and in consequence he was driven to seek the opposite method of 
direct intuition. So that his study of Spinozism did not make a 
positive, but only a negative contribution to his thought. It led 
him to feel confidence in faith, and to formulate his views of mind 
and supersensible things upon an intuitive and non-mathematical 
basis." 

Criticism. When in 1781 Kant published his Kritik der reinen 
Vemunft, Jacobi had already reached most of his philosophical con- 
ceptions. But his study of Kant's great work gave form, if not 
much content, to his thought. The ^Esthetic, in which Kant en- 
deavored to show the subjectivity of the forms of space and time, 
Jacobi conceived to be complete subjective idealism. For if space 
and time are but subjective determinations of our thought, then the 
objects which we conceive to be in space and time are equally sub- 
jective. The fact that we conceive them to be truly external does 
not in any way make them such, but only proves that along with 
the ideas of space and time and objects, we have the idea of the 
externality of those objects. This does not give real externality, but 



12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

only the ' idea ' of externality. Jacobi was in search of some real 
objectivity, and was thereby led to formulate more completely than 
ever his doctrine of realism. For he conceived that the problem of 
philosophy was to find a real objectivity, not only for the objects of 
our sense perception, but also for the objects of our supersensible 
perception. This latter was the problem of an objective theism, 
which Jacobi conceived to be the most fundamental and the most 
far-reaching of all problems. 

The categories of the understanding, which Kant found to be 
the presupposition of a science of nature, were likewise held to be 
determinations of the knowing subject, and at the same time appli- 
cable to objects as phenomena. They were not, however, applicable 
to objects as noumena, such as the self, freedom, and God. These 
never entered the world of phenomena, but had their real being 
behind the world of sense objects. They belong to the sphere of 
reason, and the laws of the understanding are not applicable to them. 
Therefore all arguments employing the Categories are equally in- 
capable of either proving or disproving these Ideas of Reason. An 
examination of these Kant took up in the Dialectic. But Kant found 
that in pure reason there might be a faith in these objects, which, 
however, looked for its support to the practical reason, where there 
was rational ground for holding to their reality. This became a 
positive doctrine to Jacobi, who had long before concluded that a 
demonstration of divine things was impossible. For a time, how- 
ever, he thought Kant's position denied these in the Pure Reason, 
only to affirm them in the Practical Reason. This, he conceived, 
would be an impossible proceeding. But he came later to think that 
Kant meant in the Pure Reason neither to deny nor to afiirm them ; 
while in the Practical Reason he did clearly afiirm them. This 
Jacobi accepted as the true account; and it helped him not only to 
formulate his own view of faith, but it helped him, likewise, to see 
more and more that such a faith is not so much feeling as reason. 
We can notice, therefore, throughout his writings an increasing ten- 
dency to give a thought-content to his act of faith. 

Gefiihlsphilosophie. Up to the time of Jacobi, the usually ac- 
cepted division of mental activities was the Aristotelian bipartite 
division of theoretical and practical, or understanding and will 
(including desire). But about this time it began to be felt that this 
was not an exhaustive division. Baumgarten, Meir, and Sulzer had 
indicated that this division did not provide a place for the sensa- 
tions of pleasure and pain, the agreeable and the disagreeable. In 
1776 Tetens definitely and with conscious explicitness proclaimed the 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 13 

discovery of another coordinate power, Feeling, and declared the 
proper division to be into Feeling, Understanding, and Will. This 
division was accepted and established by Kant, and has remained the 
almost unquestioned division throughout subsequent philosophy. 1 

While this division was being established, there was another move- 
ment which arrived less consciously at a somewhat similar result. 
The Rationalism of the Aufklarung had about spent itself; its 
inadequacies were beginning to be seen. It had virtually made all 
existence to consist in universals, and from the days of Spinoza had, 
accordingly, found great difficulty in providing for individual ex- 
istences. A static pantheism was its logical result. Against this 
movement, which was beginning to collapse from its own inherent 
weakness, there sprang up what has become known as the Gefiihls- 
philosophie, or, otherwise, the Faith-Philosophy. Of this the first 
explicit advocate and exponent was Hamann, the most prolific writer 
was Herder, while its clearest interpreter was Jacobi. 2 

These men conceived that, as existence was individual and not 
universal, philosophy must be able in some way to grasp these in- 
dividuals, as they are the only true beings ; for only in conceiving 
these can philosophy conceive the truth. It is not enough, they said, 
to grasp the concepts of pure scientific thought; the individuals 
must be known. The true is the only basis for truth, for only 
as the true is experienced can the truth be known. The scientific 
concept appeared to them to be an abstract universal, and as such 
was inadequate to contain the wealth of concrete experience. The 
only alternative they could see was the concrete individual, for as 
yet the concept of a concrete universal was unknown to philosophy. 

They therefore endeavored to overthrow the doctrine that concepts 
contain the truth ; for as they understood the term, concepts certainly 
could not contain the fulness of real being. Only in feeling, which 
was purely individual and concrete, could such individuals be known. 
All knowledge, then, starts from individual existences, and philos- 
ophy deals only with individual essences. This feeling (or faith, as 
it was likewise called) contains all the world of reality; for by it all 
individuals are known, and besides individuals there is nothing. 
This knowledge, however, for the very reason that concepts are 
abstract, cannot be put into dogma or doctrine, but must remain a 
matter for the individual soul alone. This mystical individual is 
opposed to both orthodoxy and rationalism, and contents itself with 

1 Cf. Major, The Principle of Teleology in the Critical Philosophy of Kant, 
pp. 1-16. 

2 Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 310. 

2 



14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

the bare assertion of the content of its feeling. It is, indeed, " a 
conscious un-philosophy." 1 

The points which these philosophers emphasized are thus seen to 
be two : First, that all existence is individual, and that therefore all 
knowledge must be of individuals ; and second, that feeling, not 
concepts of the understanding, is that by which real existence is 
known. This, it is seen, amounts not only to an acceptance of the 
new third element of mind, but to its elevation to a place above the 
other two, the understanding and the will. The Gefiihls philosophic, 
therefore, represents the extreme reaction against the rationalism 
of the current philosophy of the Aiifklarung. What drove them 
to this extreme was, probably, the desire to conserve the actuality 
of God, who in the Aufklarimg had become a mere name, an abstract 
universal. Kant, on the other hand, accepted the three elements, 
but left them coordinate factors of mind. That Kant's position was 
the truer there can be but little doubt. But that the philosophy of 
feeling contained an element which was a valid protest against the 
prevailing Rationalism, we shall endeavor to show in the following 
chapters. 

Jacobi started from this standpoint, which he held in common 
with the other members of the school. But, as we shall see later, 
he worked somewhat away from this ; for though continuing to hold 
to their doctrine of immediacy, he came more and more throughout 
his writings to admit a thought-content in the place of the bare 
undifferentiated feeling. In this he moved away from the school 
with which he started, and pointed the way to the more adequate 
view. In so far as he did this, he prepared the way for Hegel, by 
showing the inadequacy of the earlier philosophical concepts, and 
of the earlier view of thought in general. 

Romanticism. In Germany, Romanticism was a protest against 
the hard rationalism of the Aiifklarung, which had attempted to give 
a somewhat mathematical account of man, as of some material 
object. But it was more than a mere protest. It felt the mystery 
of life, the inexpressible mystery of spiritual existence, and en- 
deavored to give it some expression, however inadequate. Roman- 
ticism voiced those hidden aspirations which cannot be measured and 
catalogued, those deeper feelings which do not readily yield them- 
selves to exact treatment. It was, therefore, not so much a definite 
philosophy as a Zeitgeist, which found expression quite as much in 
art and literature as in philosophy. The human spirit had become 
conscious of itself as such, and found that it was possessed of 
emotions and ideals which could scarcely be expressed in concepts, 

1 Windelband, Geschichte der neiteren Philosophic, Band I, p. 572. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS. 15 

or which, at least, had never yet found any such expression. It was 
essentially a movement in which actuality was regarded as dwelling 
in concrete experiences, rather than in what was considered abstract 
thought. Schlegel said that those best comprehend truth who have 
experienced the most moods. 1 All things were interpreted with 
reference to the needs anci spiritual interests of man. Thus did 
Schelling interpret even nature. It found the depth of reality in 
the human spirit ; and in the experiences and revelations of that 
spirit all truth was known. The world of sense was but the inade- 
quate expression of the hidden soul of things, in which alone was 
complete reality. 2 Romanticism was, then, essentially a return to 
a spiritual view of things, to a recognition of the reality not only 
of thought but of feeling. But it could not long find satisfaction 
in mere spiritual experiences ; it rapidly passed into every form of 
expression, though most readily into art and literature. And when 
the knowing mind had thus asserted its right to a share in the 
mental life, the movement gave rise not only to philosophical theories, 
but likewise to theories of art and literature and history which have 
greatly enriched the modern world. 

With this movement Jacobi was in hearty sympathy, and from it 
he received much inspiration. Its spirit and purpose were the same 
as his own, as is seen in the fact that his earlier writings were all 
romances. He felt the richness of experience, but felt that it could 
not be put into concepts, *. e., he felt that so far as the understanding 
was concerned there were great mysteries in human experience. So 
he held to the opposition between head and heart, — though we are 
inclined to think that this meant less and less to him as, in the 
course of his career, he was driven to attempt a formulation of his 
doctrines. But the opposition never entirely disappeared. He always 
thought that the heart had deeper experiences than the head could 
reduce to concepts. 

The influence of Romanticism upon Jacobi, then, was to im- 
press upon him the rich content of experience, — the spirituality of 
life and its forces. For he did not feel that this life could find 
adequate expression in terms of mere intellect. In this particular 
he felt very strongly the influence of the Faith Philosophy; for 
though Romanticism gave him inspiration, the form of his philosophy 
was largely conditioned by his relations to the Faith Philosophy. 
But, as we shall see as we proceed, he was not consistent in this 
even in his early life ; and in his later life he departed from it still 
further. This is seen by his use of the word ' reason ' where he had 

1 Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 176. 

2 Cf. Hedge, Martin Luther, Essay on " Classic and Romantic." 



1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

formerly used ' faith,' showing that he recognized the element of 
thought even in the deeper experiences. 

Writings. His chief philosophical works are as follows : 

Allwills Brief sammlung, 1774. 

Woldemar, a philosophical novel, 177$. 

These two are " in essence one and the same." The revelation 
of this essence takes a double direction, once as fiction in Allwill, 
and again as actuality in Woldemar. It has been maintained by 
Zirngiebl that these two works are the only genuine philosophical 
works of Jacobi, — that they are the only ones in which his poetic 
view of things found adequate expression. For where philosophy 
is only a living power of the soul, and not a system of doctrine, these 
are the only forms in which it could truly express itself. They are, 
therefore, " not only the truest mirror, but the only true key to the 
heart-philosophy of Jacobi." 1 But, as we maintain, there was an- 
other element in his philosophy, which became increasingly promi- 
nent throughout his life, and which alone entitles him to rank as 
a philosopher, and which is seen better in some of his other works. 

Biefe iiber die Lehre Spinozas, 1785. 

David Hume iiber den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus 
with an Appendix Ueber den transcendentalen Idealismus, 1785. 
Kuno Fischer regards this as his most important work. It is in the 
form of a dialogue between the author and an interlocutor. 

Brief e iiber die Lehre Spinozas. Second edition, containing im- 
portant appendixes, 1789. 

Ueber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus die Vernunft zu Ver- 
stande zu bringen, 1801. 

Von den gottlichen Din gen, 181 1. This was directed chiefly 
against Schelling. 

Werke, a complete edition of his works in six volumes, upon which 
he was engaged at the time of his death. It was completed by 
Koppen, 1812-1825. 

1 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 27-8. 



CHAPTER II. 

JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 

Jacobi's general standpoint was virtually adopted while under the 
influence of religious Pietism, and before he had given himself seri- 
ously to philosophy. His philosophical reading and reflection but 
led him to develop this standpoint, which may be called spirit- 
ualistic empiricism. He believed that all knowledge comes by actual 
experience, but that experience is more than mere sensibility. The 
supersensible is as much the object of experience as the sensible, 
both alike being given in immediate perception. The present chap- 
ter will indicate the manner in which he developed this standpoint. 

As we have already seen, Jacobi's interest in philosophy was more 
than the interest of the mere scholar. His purpose was to find a 
method of knowledge, not for its own sake, but for the spiritual rest 
which he hoped could be thus obtained. The contemplation of the 
world was, to him, a means to the life of the spirit. 1 Like Spinoza, 
he was convinced of the vanity of all merely worldly pursuits and 
aims, 2 and with this thought in mind, gave up the mercantile life in 
order to pursue more directly the life of the spirit. 

His philosophy, accordingly, was not, in the first instance, a 
product of rational thinking, but the expression of his powerful 
feeling and his deep spiritual life. It was his own individual Welt- 
anschauung, and did not constitute a complete theoretical system. 
It was first implicitly contained in rhapsodies, correspondences, and 
romances, and only at a later time was made explicit in philosophical 
treatises. Throughout it all he fully acknowledged a supreme relig- 
ious purpose, saying that he did not write for the purpose of mere 
science, but with a distinctly spiritual purpose. 3 He further said 
that he did not intend to construct a philosophy for the schools ; for 
his philosophy was that of his own head and heart, and not according 
to truth in general. 4 

Jacobi himself anticipated the objections which may be made to 
his doctrines on the ground that they are the expression of his per- 
sonal life and character, and that therefore they do not spring from 

1 IV, a, p. xv. Cf. Zeller, Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie, p. 438. 

2 Spinoza, " On the Improvement of the Understanding," Eng. trans, by Elwes, 
Spinoza's Works, Vol. II, p. 3. 

3 IV, a, p. xxi. 

4 Ibid., p. xvii. 

17 



1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

the pure love of truth in general. 1 He saw the force of the objec- 
tion, yet he insisted that this did not prevent the doctrines from 
having a significance for a world theory. 2 He admitted, moreover, 
that those to whom personality did not appear so fundamental as it 
did to him would not find much in his philosophy. 3 He thus showed 
that he regarded his standpoint and his view of personality as 
fundamental to an understanding of his doctrines. 

Jacobi's empirical standpoint was new to the rationalism of the 
age, though it was common to him with many other thinkers, and 
was being worked out not only by Hamann and Herder, but by Kant 
in a somewhat different way, and by the writers of the Romantic 
school. It was, indeed, in the air, and philosophy, which is " the 
speech of the Zeitgeist" was being transformed by it. The old 
deductive methods were losing their hold upon the times, and the 
newer empirical methods were taking their places. But it was not 
till some time afterwards that the new methods successfully and 
completely occupied the field of philosophy. 

That Jacobi adopted the new standpoint is seen by his description 
of what he regards as the task of philosophy. He thought it the 
business of philosophy, not to construct or deduce life, but merely 
to give an account of what life itself constructs out of its experi- 
ences. 4 The older philosophy (dogmatism) had tried to deduce 
life from some concept which seemed to it fundamental, after the 
manner of geometry with its concept of space. But the true method 
is not to have one's acts spring from one's philosophy, but one's 
philosophy from one's acts and life. 5 Philosophy cannot precede, 
but must always follow experience. " Out of the enjoyment [expe- 
rience] of virtue arises the idea of virtuous being; out of the enjoy- 
ment [experience] of freedom, the idea of a free being; out of the 
enjoyment [experience] of life, the idea of a living being; out of 
the enjoyment [experience] of the divine, similarly, the idea of a 
God-like being, and of God." 6 

As a strict empiricist, Jacobi emphasized life as all-important and 
primary, and as the proper starting-point for philosophy; while 
theory is but secondary, a mere explanation of the facts of life. 
What he found in life must be given a place in theory; and not as 
an illusion, 7 but as a fact to be reckoned with. Life, especially 

1 IV, a, p. xii. 

2 Ibid., p. Hi. 

3 Ibid., p. li. 

4 Ibid., pp. 234-5. 

5 Ibid., p. 237. 

6 Ibid., p. 241. 

7 This is a favorite resort of the old and the new Aufklarimg, and of some of 
the Evolution or Pure-Experience philosophies of to-day. 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 1 9 

spiritual life with its fulness, must all be provided for by doctrine, 
or else doctrine must recognize its own short-comings. He says : 
" I would, as well as I can, bring to light what exists in the spirit 
of man independent of the flesh, and therewith express at least my 
disdain for the mud philosophy of our day, which to me is an 
abomination." 1 

This general standpoint grew out of the feeling, common to him 
with others, that there was not much value in the current deductive 
systems of philosophy. 2 But, as he carried the revolt to greater 
extremes than many others, and as he had his own peculiarities of 
thought, he found he was often greatly misunderstood. He wrote 
to Hamann : " I do not know if they understand me. If you under- 
stand me, then impart suitable counsel to the honest who in these 
desert places are distressed and look about them for deliverance, 
only yet held erect and strengthened through devout presentiment." 3 
And because Jacobi regarded these spiritual experiences as beyond 
and deeper than the understanding, he himself found it difficult to 
express what he meant. He continues in his letter to Hamann : 
" There is light in my heart, but when I would bring it to the under- 
standing it disappears. Which of the two elements is the true one, 
— that of the understanding, which, indeed, fixes forms, but behind 
them shows only a bottomless abyss, or that of the heart, which, 
indeed, throws light promisingly upwards, but fails in determinate 
knowledge? Can the human mind grasp the truth, except through 
the union of both in a single light? And is this union thinkable, 
except through a miracle ? " 4 

This shows the two elements in his view which to the last he 
found it impossible to reconcile. On the one hand, he was deeply 
impressed with the reality of the experiences of the heart. He was 
by nature gifted with a deep mysticism, and with a sense of the 
supersensible and the divine. 5 On the other hand, he was impressed 
with the value of science, and of the concepts of the understanding, 
or, as he says, of the knowledge of the head. The former consti- 
tuted the positive element in his doctrine; the latter, the negative. 
" The positive content of Jacobi's philosophy refers, consequently, 
to love and life ; the negative, to the concept and to science ; and 
between the two stands his prejudice of their irreconcilability.'' 6 

1 I, P- 365. 

2 Zeller, Geschichte der deutschen Philosophic, p. 437. 
3 1, pp. 366-7. 

4 Ibid., p. 367. 

5 Kuhn, Jacobi und die Philosophic seiner Zcii, p. 134. 
5 Zirngiebl, Jacobi's Leben, Dichten und Denken, p. 44. 



20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

The first or positive element grew out of his conception of the value 
of the individual and of the individual experiences. This he got 
largely from Pietism, which, like all movements that sprang from 
the Reformation, placed primary importance on the individual and 
his spiritual experiences, as is seen in the doctrine of Justification 
by Faith. This, probably, more than any other influence, led phi- 
losophy from the consideration of ontological and cosmological 
problems to that of psychological. But when Jacobi wrote, that in- 
fluence had not yet extended throughout the philosophical world, 
and the current philosophy of the schools was still of the dogmatic, 
deductive, type. 

His acquaintance with the French Sensational School, and with 
the writings of the English Empiricists, had convinced him that 
individual experience, or the psychological method, was the only 
true philosophical method. This, however, he had already learned, 
in its religious aspects, through his connection with Pietism, though 
this movement, of course, placed the emphasis on different aspects 
of experience. With Locke and Hume he believed that all our 
knowledge comes from experience in its two aspects of Sensation 
and Reflection; and it was doubtless from this source that he got 
this part of his doctrine. With these writers, too, he believed that 
the limits of individual experience are the limits of philosophical 
inquiry, and that that of which the individual is conscious consti- 
tutes the entire material of philosophical investigation. Hume had 
thus drawn philosophy down from the skies by showing the impos- 
sibility of the application of a priori principles outside the range of 
experience. 1 But by his arbitrary limitation of knowledge to phe- 
nomena as impressions upon the senses, Hume left reason a mere 
elaborative faculty, saying that " no kind of reasoning can give rise 
to a new idea, . . . but wherever we reason, we must antecedently 
be possest of clear ideas." 2 

This limitation of knowledge to phenomena is virtually a denial 
of the possibility of any purely a priori knowledge, — a priori in the 
sense of being entirely independent of experience; and also of any 
knowledge of a priori principles of knowledge. This view of 
knowledge Jacobi accepted, for he too believed that such knowl- 
edge is quite impossible. But while denying the ordinary a priori 
knowledge, there is one kind of knowledge to which he would give 
the name a priori, viz., those concepts and principles which are ob- 
tained positively and immediately from the actual, i. e., from intui- 

^II, p. 69. 

3 Treatise of Human Nature (Selby-Bigge edition), p. 164. 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 21 

tion, from an experience of the actual. 1 In other words, Jacobi 
believed that all knowledge issues from experience, but that experi- 
ence itself contains more than mere phenomena, or sense impres- 
sions. Metaphysical principles, he held, are as much given in expe- 
rience as impressions themselves. This he seems to have learned 
from his study of Kant, which supplemented his study of Empiri- 
cism and Sensationalism. But he regarded Kant's attempt to dis- 
cover what knowledge could be gained independent of, and even 
previous to, experience as necessary futile. This, he thought, would 
mean that a knowledge of the actual could be gained apart from 
actuality ; that the truth could be known apart from the true, a thing 
which he deemed impossible. 2 

The epistemology of the Dogmatists had virtually held that truth 
could be evolved from the mind alone after the manner of geometry. 
But Jacobi maintained that only in connection with sensibility can 
the understanding give the true. Sense and understanding must 
combine in order to produce knowledge. The two are reciprocal 
elements, and must combine in order that knowledge may arise. 
" And so one must say, not only of the knowledge which is called 
a priori, but of all knowledge in general, that it cannot be worked 
up through the sense, but only through the living and active faculty 
of the soul." 3 

While opposing the Dogmatists by holding to the necessity of 
sense perception, he also opposed the Empiricists by viewing mind 
as an active function. Consciousness is active, and is one with life, 
which is everywhere an activity. Mind is no dead mirror, for it 
would then be no consciousness. 4 Reason is essentially active; it 
is not a 'torch/ but an 'eye'; for it does not give light, — it sees. 5 
He saw clearly that consciousness must be an active function which 
judges, and not merely a passive entity which receives material 
given it from without. He thus moved away from Hume and the 
older empiricists, from whom, however, he learned much, and for 
much of whose philosophy he had a good deal of sympathy. Con- 
sciousness, to Jacobi, is an active principle which is joined with 
perceptions, and constitutes reason, which is the essential excellence 
of our nature. 6 In this way, " the purest and richest impression has 
the purest and richest reason for its result." 7 And this reason is 

1 II, pp. 267-8. 

2 Ibid., p. 263. 

3 Ibid., p. 272. 

* Kuhn, op. c'it.j p. 158. 

5 II, P . 266. 

6 Ibid., P . 268. 

7 Ibid., p. 270. 



22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

but the indwelling in us of spirit, 1 which Jacobi always conceived 
as active. The unity which there is in experience is not that of a 
mere stream or aggregate of experiences, but is due to its being the 
experience of a real central principle of unity — the soul. As in the 
universe as a whole, so in the experiences of man, the only unifying 
principle is spirit. 2 The human soul is a real principle of unity, for 
its nature consists especially in this, that it is able to distinguish 
itself from other things. 3 

Jacobi thus gives evidence of a very clear conception of what con- 
stitutes self-consciousness, — a conception upon which his whole phi- 
losophy is based. It would be too much to say, however, that his 
view is completely adequate, or fully worked out. But he saw 
clearly the uniqueness of knowledge and of conscious activity, and 
its essential difference from all the mechanical or biological processes 
of nature. Any fact of knowledge, or other mental process, does 
not constitute an object in a world of objects. It has none of the 
ear-marks of a ' thing.' It is of a totally different order, and is 
in no way a 'particular,' after the manner of the objects of the 
external world. It is, on the contrary, in every case a ' universal,' 
and so can never be a determination of a ' thing.' It is a deter- 
mination of spirit, which alone constitutes a substratum for the 
universal. 

In accordance with this, Jacobi affirmed strenuously that thought 
is not a mechanical determination, but an activity of spirit, obeying 
a higher law, which, for want of a better word, is commonly called 
' freedom.' That is to say, the laws and conceptions which apply 
to the external world of objects will not apply to the internal world 
of thought. In so far as man is one among a world of objects, that 
is, as body, he is governed by the same laws of mechanism and nat- 
ural necessity which govern all other objects. Freedom and natural 
necessity are, therefore, joined in man, though how it is impossible 
for one to explain. 4 It will not do to deny the fact, however, for 
want of an adequate explanation. That there are two such distinct 
realms, the one of freedom, the other of necessity, is obvious to all. 
To deny freedom would be to deny spirit and to reduce all to a 
mechanism which has an accompanying consciousness. 5 For if man 
is not free, then all the products of man are produced necessarily, 
and intelligence is a mere onlooker. 

1 III, p. 422. 
2 II, p. 274. 

3 Ibid., p. 278. 

4 Ibid., p. 317. 

5 Ibid., p. 318. 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 23 

We must take freedom as the highest and first, as the absolute 
beginning, or else we are obliged with Spinoza and his predecessors 
and successors to accept fatalism, and to reduce ethics to physics. 1 
Consciousness, however, will not submit to such a reduction ; and, 
moreover, a universal and infinite nature-mechanism would have no 
meaning. Just as the knowledge of nature cannot be itself a part 
of nature, so, in order for nature to have any meaning, there must 
be persons who are not parts of the nature-mechanism, who are not 
included in the chain of mechanical necessity. There must be some 
principle which is outside the process, in order that the process may 
have any meaning. The assumption that there is an actual and true 
freedom, then, becomes necessary, though it remains for later inves- 
tigation to fix the exact limits of freedom and necessity. 

Freedom, in Jacobi's conception, means that man's spirit is not 
subject to the mechanism of nature, but in some manner rises above 
it, and makes it to be its servant. 2 This consists in the exercise of 
the will ; for " the independency and inner power of the will, or the 
possible sovereignty of the intellectual essence over the sensible 
essence is de facto conceded by all men." 3 This means that the will 
is moved by spiritual and not by mere mechanical determination. 
To consider the spirit as mechanically moved (as with Hartley, Con- 
dillac, or Bonnet) would necessitate a mechanics of the soul as all- 
embracing as Newton's view of the heavens. Moreover, without 
the conception of freedom, no one would ever know the limits of the 
determined, or that there are limits ; and without the consciousness 
of a world higher than sense, no one would know what determina- 
tion means. 4 

Positively, freedom is self-activity, though not an absolute self- 
activity, but an activity that is moved by ideals which are of divine 
origin. 5 It " does not consist in an absurd power of deciding without 
reasons, nor even in the choice of what is better among useful things, 
or of rational desire. . . . But it consists in this essentially, — the 
independence, on the part of the will, of the desires." 6 In other 
words, the will is moved, not by desires which are entirely physical, 
but by ideals which are spiritual ; for the choosing and judging 
spirit can disregard all the promptings of the flesh. That this is an 
adequate view of desire need hardly be urged ; for it is evident that 

1 n, P . 47. 

2 Ibid., p. 316; III, p. 401. 
s IV, a, p. 28. 

*II, pp. 80-1. 

5 IV, a, p. xxvii ; II, pp. 46, 315-6. 

* Ibid., p. 27. 



24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

the desires of a human being must contain both rational and physical 
elements ; and that the will is not independent of, but has a very close 
relation to desire. 

At this point we see one of Jacobi's peculiar views, which shows 
his conception of the limitation of the scientific method. He held 
that supersensible things cannot be treated scientifically. At Geneva 
he had learned the methods of exact science, and had seen the vain 
endeavor of the sensationalists to apply these methods to> psychic 
phenomena. In their efforts to make a science of the things of the 
spirit, commonly so-called, these materialists had taken away all the 
content of life, and had thus left a deep chasm between science and 
life. But Jacobi maintained that the soul, which is a free spirit, 
cannot thus be treated scientifically. 1 He did not deny the appro- 
priateness of these methods to physical phenomena, but held that 
another method, namely, faith, intuition, and not demonstration, 
must be adopted when we come to deal with supersensible facts. In 
this way he could accept the science of the Aiifkl'drung, and of the 
Sensationalists, while he likewise accepted the philosophy of faith 
or of feeling. This gave him a double world-view, one the scien- 
tific, from the standpoint of which he was a skeptic; the other the 
philosophical, from the standpoint of which he was a strict theist. 
These different positions he maintained at one and the same time, 
and never saw their reconciliation, but stood Janus-faced between 
the two. 2 He never could reconcile his philosophical view of life 
with his scientific view of the world, though he somewhat dogmat- 
ically maintained the supremacy of the former. 3 " Life and science 
are for Jacobi heterogeneous things. In the one he denies what in 
the other he posits ; all life is to him an immediacy, all thought a 
mediation. Life exists of itself, but human knowledge is through 
and through dependent." 4 In other words, life is a process of im- 
mediacy, and this fact philosophy must take as its starting-point; 
while science or definite knowledge depends upon demonstration, 
and issues only in abstract concepts. 

Instead of seeking a reconciliation of science and life by a careful 
examination of the method of science, he accepted the scientific 
method as valid when applied to the facts of nature, and, accord- 
ingly, accepted the resulting view of nature. But he could not 
accept its results in the sphere of the supersensible; though he had 
no objection to urge against the method as such, but only against 

*II, p. 314. 

2 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 7. 

3 Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 55. 

4 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 47. 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 25 

its unsatisfactory results. His reverent regard for facts, especially 
the facts of the spiritual life, prevented him from being forced to 
accept the conclusions of the sensationalists and the materialists. 
He endeavored, however, to discover a new method for the study 
of supersensible facts, the method of immediacy. This was not orig- 
inal with him, as he held it in common with Hamann, Herder, and 
others, though he did more than any other to show its true mean- 
ing, and to bring it into philosophy. He accordingly came to re- 
serve the term ' science ' for those studies to which he considered 
the exact mathematical method of the sensationalists and dogma- 
tists applicable, namely, the study of nature and all its forms ; while 
he reserved the term ' philosophy ' for the study of spiritual things, 
where he considered the method of immediacy, of intuition, of faith, 
was alone applicable. 

This unfortunate schism in his view of the world shows itself in 
two ways. On the one hand, it left him with the crude materialistic 
view of nature, as an absolutely spiritless, purely mechanical system. 
It was in every way the opposite of spirit. 1 Nature was the region 
of necessary and regular laws, i. e., of determination ; and the meth- 
odology of science was therefore mathematics. The great achieve- 
ments of Newton and other mathematicians had made scientists 
think that mathematics was the key to all knowledge. It was, there- 
fore, not the fault of Jacobi, but one of the limitations of his age, 
that he could not conceive of any other scientific method. The 
biological sciences, which do not use mathematics, had not suffi- 
ciently developed, and it was only with their development that it 
was seen that the mathematical was not the only scientific method. 
It is to the credit of Jacobi, then, that he could work himself free 
from the methods in which he had been trained ; and it is interesting 
to find him agreeing with F. Schlegel, that it was to be lamented that 
since Bacon there had been many attempts to degrade philosophy to 
a science, after the manner of mathematics and physics. 2 

On the other hand, his schism between life and science left 
Jacobi with the view that the facts of life would not submit to any 
kind of scientific treatment at all, — that no knowledge of the super- 
sensible could be gained by any process of reflection, but only in an 
immediacy of experience which he called faith or feeling, but came 
later to call reason. He accordingly opposed the entire philosophy 
of reflection, which he conceived to subordinate the immediate 
to mediate knowledge. He regretted that there had been, ever since 
Aristotle, an attempt to subordinate the immediate to the mediate, 

1 Drews, Die deutsche Spekulation seit Kant, Bd. II, p. 7. 

2 III, p. xxxii. 



26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

perception to reflection, the original to the copy, the essence to the 
word, the reason to the understanding; to hold nothing for true 
which cannot be proved, and to regard intuition as of less value than 
the concept. x He thought this kind of philosophy regarded nothing 
as true which could not be twice shown, once in perception where it 
was given directly, and once in conception where it was to be 
demonstrated. 

To refute, then, what he called the ' philosophy of reflection ' 
was one side of Jacobi's aim and endeavor. This negative aspect 
has been thought by many to be his chief service to philosophy. 
Kuno Fischer says Jacobi's greatest strength comes out in the 
negative, and that his standpoint appears best in opposition and 
denial ; the more a view was opposite to his own the more marked 
was his sharpness and shrewdness. 2 Jacobi's negative position with 
reference to the previous philosophy is considered his merit by 
Punjer also, who says that opinion will probably long differ as to 
the value of his positive effort to found a special philosophy of Belief 
or Feeling. 3 This is in the main true, for Jacobi did much to show 
the insufficiency of the analytical method which had so long prevailed 
in philosophy, and which he calls the ' philosophy of reflection ' ; 
though he did not see very clearly the meaning of the synthetic 
method, which was the method he was endeavoring to formulate. 
But it is only fair to him to state that he at least showed what a true 
synthetic method must be, though he never could succeed in setting 
it forth satisfactorily, even to himself. 

Philosophy, as he conceived it, had proceeded by demonstration 
in the sphere of the understanding, and as such could not touch at 
all the facts of reason (or faith). 4 With Descartes this false method 
had entered philosophy, and ever since his time practically all 
philosophy had gone on the same line, holding nothing for true 
which could not be proved, or demonstrated by the understanding. 
This proceeded on the assumption that all knowledge is mediated 
by ideas, 5 and ignored the concrete experiences of a conscious human 
being. 6 It made ideas depend only upon ideas, and so on ad 
infinitum. But Jacobi's contention was that ideas come from ex- 
periences, directly and immediately. 7 In other words, his objection 
was that the earlier philosophy had been entirely deductive, with 
* II, p. ii. 

2 Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, Bd. V, p. 218. 

3 Punjer, Op. cit., p. 623. 

4 IV, a, p. xxx. 

5 Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 23 ff. 

6 IV, a, pp. 30 ff. 

7 Ibid. 



JACOBFS STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 27 

no empirical element, whereas a true philosophy must be in con- 
stant touch with experience. Deduction would, moreover, involve 
an endless series without ever getting a fundamental principle, or 
actual experience, and would therefore yield only an unconditioned 
which is free from material, — empty, and completely indeterminate. 1 
This very discerning criticism seems to be an anticipation on the 
part of Jacobi of Hegel's view of thought as giving a concrete, and 
not an abstract universal. 

Jacobi accepted the current division of the thinking faculty into 
understanding and reason, but differed from the current view as to 
what were their respective spheres. To him, the understanding was 
a faculty of mediation, a mere faculty of concepts, judgments, and 
conclusions, which can reveal absolutely nothing out of itself. 2 It 
simply gets concepts of concepts from concepts, and so gradually 
attains to ideas, though it does not touch reality. 3 It is a fac- 
ulty of reflection on sense intuitions, a faculty which separates and 
reunites concepts, judgments, and conclusions, 4 and is thus a faculty 
of abstractions. 5 With Kant, Jacobi regarded the understand- 
ing as in no way dealing with reality directly, but depending upon 
sensibility which furnishes the material of thought. But he differed 
from Kant in holding that reason too (or faith) furnishes an intu- 
ition of the true and the real. Jacobi thought that, while sensibility 
furnishes the material of our knowledge of sensible objects, the 
reason (or faith) furnishes just as directly our knowledge of super- 
sensible objects. Kant's inteilectuelle Anschauung bears some rela- 
tion to Jacobi's doctrine on this point, though it differs greatly in 
that Kant conceives this rather as an ideal of knowledge, in which 
the intellectual element is freed from and does not depend upon the 
sensible, and as such is possible only in the divine consciousness, 
and can at best be merely approximated by the human consciousness. 
Jacobi, on the other hand, conceived his ' rational intuition ' as the 
faculty of supersensible knowledge, or of the knowledge of super- 
sensible objects. Reason was to him quite as much a faculty of intu- 
ition as was sense. Indeed, this is the main contention of his* entire 
philosophy. 

It is important to notice, at this point, the change which Jacobi 
made in his use of the terms ' understanding ' and ' reason.' The 
ordinary use of these words was that " Ver stand (understanding) is 
the more practical intellect which seeks definite and restricted re- 

1 Piinjer, op. cit., p. 633. 

2 II, pp. 10-11. 

3 Ibid., p. 2> 2 ' 

4 Ibid. , p. 65. 

5 Ibid., p. 78, and III, pp. 23 and 93. 



28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

suits and knowledges; while Vermin ft (reason) is a deeper and 
higher power which aims at completeness." 1 Understanding, then, 
was the general faculty of cognition, while reason was a higher 
power which sees the connections of things. As against both of 
these forms of knowledge, Jacobi, in his earlier writings, insisted 
on the superior authority of feeling or faith. In his later writings, 
however, he broadened his use of the term ' reason ' to include what 
Kant had meant by both reason and faith, especially reason in its 
practical use. Thus " what he had first called Glaube he latterly 
called Vernunft, — which is in brief a ' sense for the supersensible,' — 
an intuition giving higher and complete or total knowledge — an 
immediate apprehension of the real and the true. As contrasted 
with this reasonable faith or feeling, he regards Verstand as a mere 
faculty of inference or derivative knowledge, referring one thing 
to another by the rule of identity." 2 

Jacobi is thus seen to make a distinction between understanding 
and reason (faith) which makes the two irreconcilable. Understand- 
ing deals with matters which come under what we call science. It 
deals with concepts and ideas which are derived from objects of 
sense perception. As such, it is always mediate, and can never reach 
objects (or the true) directly, but can deal with truth only at second 
hand, or by demonstration. Reason (faith), on the other hand, 
which is the organ of philosophy, reaches out to objects, to reality, 
to the true, in a manner similar to sensibility itself, only that it 
reaches a different kind of objects, viz., supersensible objects. 

The understanding, therefore, will not be able to assert the ex- 
istence of any real things, but will often be led to deny them alto- 
gether, especially the supersensible objects of reason. Kant had 
shown that the understanding, in attempting to deal with uncon- 
ditioned objects, falls into antinomies, and Jacobi maintained that it 
is even led to deny the existence of these objects altogether, simply 
because it has no means of reaching them. They belong to a totally 
different sphere of intellectual activity. But what the understanding 
denies the reason affirms, and neither one can disprove the other, 
though each is supreme in its own sphere. 

Jacobi thus held to a form of the twofold truth, — Science on the 
one hand, and Faith (Reason) on the other. He is here seen to 
be anti-rationalistic, for he makes a complete opposition between 
feeling (reason) and thought (understanding), 3 and gives the 

1 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 400. 

2 Ibid., p. 401. Cf. also Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 156 ff, and Pvinjer, op. cit., p. 622. 

3 Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Bd., II, pp. 338-339- 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 29 

superiority to the former. It is to be noted, however, that the ex- 
treme form of the opposition was no necessary part of Jacobi's doc- 
trine, but came about as a result of the onesidedness of the Anf- 
klarung, and from the rationalism which was the " driving-wheel 
of the Aufklarung." 1 It may be well to recall that this counter 
tendency to rationalism had been in the air for some time, and that 
it took shape not only in the Gefuhlsphilosophie, but also in the 
Romantic movement, as well as in every form of activity. So that 
" the opposition between science and faith posited by Jacobi is closely 
connected with the great movement on behalf of feeling which, 
since Rousseau, had governed the age. . . . He fought for the rights 
of immediacy, of reality, and of individuality, and in so doing con- 
tributed important corrections to the direction which philosophy was 
on the point of taking, and along which he himself would fain have 
enticed her." 2 

But in stating the matter in this way, Jacobi created that contra- 
diction from which he delivered himself only by his sal to mortale. 
Finding himself shut up within the region of the conditioned, of the 
understanding, the only way he could see to get out was by a leap 
for life into the region of faith beyond. Once there, he was equally 
unable to return. That is to say, the conditioned and the uncon- 
ditioned were two distinct and separate spheres, which had nothing 
to do with each other. He could not conceive the unconditioned as 
being the principle of knowledge and will in the conditioned, but the 
two were hopelessly and forever outside each other. Consequently, 
his " faith and his knowledge constituted two distinct philosophies ; 
hence it was no wonder that he complained that his head and his 
heart were at variance." 3 This constitutes one of the fundamental 
weaknesses of his system, and leaves him not with one philosophy, 
but with two. And so contradictory are the two that they can be 
held together only by force. 

We may see, accordingly, his view of what constitutes the sphere 
and the problem of philosophy. He did not understand philosophy 
to be a science in the usual meaning of that word, which is mediate 
knowledge through conceptions. On the contrary, philosophy is an 
immediate knowledge of the supersensible. 4 Science deals only with 
the sensible and the conditioned, and its instrument is the under- 
standing. Accordingly, if we are to have any knowledge of the 
supersensible at all, there must be a faculty which is higher than 

1 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 2. 

2 Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 120. 

3 Ibid., p. 121. 

* Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 63. 
3 



30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

understanding. 1 This faculty is reason or faith, and it operates in 
a positive or mystical way. 2 And just as sense intuition does not 
depend upon demonstration, but refers directly to objects themselves, 
so this higher faculty of reason or faith reveals the objects of reason 
immediately. 3 (It might very well be called rational intuition.) The 
sphere of this faculty is the sphere of philosophy, which is therefore 
seen to consist in the setting forth of the objects of reason or faith, 
as these are revealed immediately to knowledge. Man, then, and his 
experiences of the supersensible, rather than his experiences of 
nature, constitute the sphere and problem of ' philosophy.' Philoso- 
phy cannot begin with nature, for then it could never get into the 
unconditioned at all. It must begin immediately with the uncon- 
ditioned, what Jacobi called the original revelation to the soul, which 
is more than all nature put together. 4 And the function of philosophy 
is therefore " to exhibit in the most conscientious way humanity as 
it is, be it explicable or inexplicable." 5 This involves two things : 
First, philosophy deals with man, not nature. Nature is the field 
of science ; and Jacobi had but little regard for a science of nature 
as such. For, to him, nature seemed to conceal God, as it revealed 
only a chain of efficient causes, or a mechanism, in which there was 
no place for things peculiarly divine, such as virtue and immortality. 
Secondly, the function of philosophy is to reveal existence, not to 
demonstrate it. " The greatest merit of enquiry is to unveil and to 
reveal existence. Definition is its means — the way to its goal — its 
proximate, not its ultimate end. Its ultimate end is that which can- 
not be defined, the insoluble, the immediate, the simple." 6 

The proper notions of philosophy are, therefore, no mere ideas, 
which rest upon mediation, but immediate convictions, subjectively 
and objectively certain truths. 7 Jacobi considered that concepts 
could not help where there was neither outer nor inner object m- 
tuitable through impression or feeling. Every demonstration which 
does not proceed on this assumption, every explanation which does 
not give an intuitable object, is, like mathematical points and lines, 
only a cobweb of the brain. 8 Not nature, then, but the invisible, the 
mysterious, the divine, was what he regarded as the field of philoso- 
phy. 9 And these objects, he held, are the objects of philosophy only 

^1, P . 22. 

2 Ibid., p. 23. 

3 Ibid., p. 59. 

4 IV, a, p. xli. ~ 

s Piinjer, op. cit., p. 623. 

6 Ibid. 

7 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 61. Cf. also p. 25. 

8 Ibid., p. 122. 

9 Ibid., p. 124. 



JACOBI'S STANDPOINT AND PROBLEM. 31 

in so far as they are able to present themselves in intuition ; for what 
is actual can be intuited. 1 Jacobi's interest in philosophy was there- 
fore with those objects of our thought and higher life which are 
comprehended under the terms God, Freedom, and Immortality. 2 
These and the relations in which they subsist, and in which they 
become known to men, are the objects of philosophical inquiry. 
These alone are matters of universal human interest; all other ob- 
jects are of merely special and temporary interest. 

After carefully examining the standpoints of the various types of 
philosophy, Jacobi remained unsatisfied. He had no ambition to 
construct a system, and was driven to an independent formulation 
of his views only by the necessity of finding a resting-place for his 
thought; and, more particularly, by his desire to establish theism 
and religion, which contained for him the whole significance of life. 
But this was not until he had failed to find contentment either in 
Sensationalism, in Dogmatism, or in Criticism. His reading of 
Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff had convinced him that in this type of 
philosophy his purpose of finding a place for the supersensible, or 
for spiritual objects, for religion and freedom, could not be realized. 
Nor did he have any better hopes for the Critical Philosophy, which 
ended in the complete idealism of Fichte. And his reading of 
Hume and the Geneva school showed him plainly that no place could 
be found for these in Empiricism. 

While these various schools were deductive or inductive as the 
case might be, their common characteristic was their analytical 
method, — they started with conceptions which were obtained either 
a priori or a posteriori, and their movement was constantly within 
the circle in which they began. They never got beyond. Kant 
alone had a synthetic method, but as Jacobi did not thoroughly 
understand Kant's meaning, he missed the very thing for which he 
was looking. What he wanted was some method by which he might 
get out of the eternal hobby-horse movement that kept forever in 
the place where it began. Descartes had started the method of 
demonstration from purely a priori conceptions, and it had ended 
in the Dialectic of Kant. Locke had begun purely epistemological 
studies, starting from subjective sensations, and this movement had 
ended in the Scepticism of Hume. And it was Jacobi's contention 
that Kant had not completely answered Hume, but was himself 
equally subjective, and had found no certainty except in the ideas 
of the individual consciousness. The whole question, then, of the 

1 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 128. 

2 III, p. 68. 



32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

objective validity of our sensations and of our ideas still stood await- 
ing an answer. 

Dogmatism, Empiricism, and Criticism had all raised, but had 
not settled, the question as to the objective validity of our percep- 
tions, and especially of our internal perceptions. The question, 
then, which confronted Jacobi was that of the objective validity of 
our perceptions and our experiences. The Scottish School had the 
same problem, and answered it in a somewhat similar way. The 
affiliations of Jacobi and Reid have often been noted. Jacobi, how- 
ever, while attempting to answer the question in both its aspects, 
with reference to both subjective and objective perceptions, was 
nevertheless more interested in the former. His answer consisted 
\ in maintaining that we know objects immediately, without the need 
/ of any demonstration. He differed, however, in a marked manner 
from the Scottish School. Reid had held that our knowledge is in 
the first instance of ideas, but had held that our ideas are ideas of 
objects. Jacobi, on the other hand, maintained that our knowledge 
is immediately of objects, and that our ideas are at once our percep- 
tions. He would not admit that our knowledge was of ideas, but 
that it was of objects. Hence, he thought, objects were immedi- 
ately given in the very first act of knowledge. His views on this 
subject constitute his doctrine of immediacy. In regard to sense 
perceptions, his doctrine was a form of Realism gradually develop- 
ing toward Idealism; while his answer with regard to our internal 
perceptions, or of supersensible objects, constitutes his view of The- 
ism and Religion. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 

Jacobi's main problem, then, was to discover the method and the 
manner by which we obtain knowledge of objective existence; for 
he never doubted that there is objective existence, and that we have 
a knowledge of it. Kant, starting from the same certainty of 
knowledge, tried to find out what must be the conditions in the sub- 
ject which make a knowledge of the object possible. Jacobi, on the 
other hand, was not interested in analyzing the metaphysical condi- 
tions of knowledge, as these are to be found in either the subject 
or the object, but in the purely epistemological problem of how the 
subject is related to the object in the concrete process of knowledge. 
As we have already seen, he had discarded demonstration, or media- 
tion by ideas, as the method of reaching the truth, because, at best, 
this is a method at second hand. Ideas are to him abstract uni- 
versal, and as such do not put one in contact with the true reality. 
They give only the truth, which is but a reflection of the true, and is 
not the true itself. The true is the only concrete. He says : " Con- 
sciousness and life are one." 1 And this seems to mean that both 
life and knowledge (consciousness) have to do at once with the 
concrete. All knowledge is a knowledge of reality, of actuality. 

In other words, Jacobi was a pure empiricist in the matter of 
knowledge. He was, indeed, a much stricter empiricist than Locke 
or Hume, for while they both held that knowledge is only of 
ideas, Jacobi said that knowledge is directly of objects. As Royce 
remarks, the mystic is the only complete empiricist. Jacobi, more- 
over, extended the bounds of direct empirical knowledge much fur- 
ther than Locke or Hume had ever thought of doing. These think- 
ers had limited it to the data of sensation and reflection ; and Hume 
had gone so far as to make every idea depend upon an impression 
on the senses, while Locke had made Reflection of little avail by 
limiting it to the ideas " the mind gets by reflecting on its own oper- 
ations within itself." 2 Jacobi had no disposition to question this 
general standpoint, but he merely extended the field of direct obser- 
vation so as to include in ' Reflection ' the objects of internal as well 
as external intuition. By this he meant not the operations of the 

1 Werke, II, p. 263. 

2 Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. II, ch. i, § 4. 

33 



34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

mind, but spiritual objects which are in no way objects of sense, 
such as the existence and personality of God, Freedom, and Im- 
mortality. 

This, then, is to deny that sense is the only way in which we can 
relate ourselves directly to reality. There is yet another way, says 
Jacobi, but it is at the same time another sort of reality that is 
reached. The first way, the way of sense, relates us only to mate- 
rial objects. The other way, the way of faith, relates us to super- 
sensible and immaterial objects. To this view Jacobi was led after 
reading Hume, and was subsequently confirmed in it by reading 
Kant. And it was his reading of Kant that caused the change in 
his terminology. At first he used the words ' feeling ' and ' faith ' ; 
the one signifying the faculty used, the other the assurance we had 
of the actuality of the object, though he at times confused the two. 
But later he came to use the word ' reason ' for both the faculty and 
the assurance. It is, however, to be noted that Jacobi, though bor- 
rowing the terms of other writers, did not always employ them in 
the original sense. None of the philosophers mentioned above 
thought of any way in which supersensible objects could be directly 
known. Knowledge of such objects was to them at best only me- 
diate. Locke said that we know God by demonstration ; Hume dis- 
avowed such knowledge altogether; while Kant got it only by the 
round-about way of the practical reason. But in spite of this scepti- 
cism, Jacobi was never led to doubt the reality of such objects, or the 
possibility of our knowing them immediately. He was led only to 
doubt all preceding methods of knowledge, and was thrown back 
upon himself to find some new method which should be adequate to 
the task. 

Empiricism had taught him to think that perception was the only 
method of knowledge which gave the true, and thereby the truth. 
He accordingly said that there must then be a perception of the 
supersensible, after the manner of the perception of the sensible, 
which alone the empiricists recognized. In taking the position that 
all knowledge is positive, and rests upon perception, 1 Jacobi thought 
he was merely following out consistently and to its proper limit the 
fundamental position upon which practically all philosophy is built. 
Even Descartes and Spinoza, though rationalists and demonstrative 
philosophers, started with immediate intuitions. The ' I think ' of 
Descartes was an immediate intuition, and from this he made his 
departure, though he henceforth proceeded by mediation. 2 Simi- 

1 Cf. Kuhn, Jacobi u. d. Philos. s. Zeit, p. 160. 

2 Ibid., pp. 68-72. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 3 5 

larly, Spinoza started with an intuition, — the identity of thought 
and extension in God as substance, — and from this he developed his 
system mediately. This intuition, then, which forms the basis of 
the presupposition of the identity of knowledge and being, was nec- 
essary for Spinoza in order that he might get under way. Thus, 
from the intuition ' I think,' Descartes developed the I, the not-I, and 
God; and from the intuition of God, Spinoza developed the fulness 
of the world of being and of knowledge. 1 

This, then, is the method which Jacobi adopted, and which he 
endeavored to carry through to the end without abandoning it for 
mediation as soon as he got under way, as the others had done. 
This he called his method of faith or of immediate intuition ; and 
in the form in which we have outlined it, it is the only form which 
Jacobi recognized in his earlier writings, — the period of Allwill and 
Woldemar. Some of the German writers on Jacobi seem to regard 
this as the only true philosophical method. 2 But this would be to 
abandon philosophy as a thought-problem and to mistake a practical 
for a theoretical solution. It is in this same spirit that Hegel says 
that philosophy begins where Jacobi ends, for philosophy is an en- 
deavor to resolve the contradictions of life. Jacobi, he says, sim- 
ply proves the presence of contradictions, and stops there. 3 If this 
were all he did, then Jacobi would not be a philosopher at all. It 
is true that in his early writings Jacobi was merely the mystic, the 
dreamer, and that he did not try to formulate his views in any sys- 
tematic way, but was satisfied to express them in the romantic forms 
of correspondence and fiction. In his later years, however, he was 
led to more definite formulations of his doctrines, and came also to 
see that his principle of immediacy was no less a principle of thought 
than of feeling, as is evidenced by the fact that he changed his termi- 
nology, and that he called his principle ' reason ' rather than ' feel- 
ing.' We do not regard this change in names as indicating any 
change in principle, but only as evidence that he came to realize 
more clearly that thought no less than feeling was a factor in imme- 
diacy. Perhaps the best and most complete presentation of his doc- 
trine is to be found in his latest writings, — the general Introduction 
to his collected works, which is prefixed to the second volume. It 
will be our task now to follow him in more detail in his exposition 
of his doctrine, as this can be gathered from his complete works. 

Jacobi's general attitude was that of the Faith Philosophy. This 

1 Op. cit., pp. 76, 78. 
2 E. g., Kuhn and Zirngiebl. 

3 Cf. Levy-Bruhl, La philosophic de Jacobi, pp. 247-8. For Hegel's criticism of 
Jacobi cf. Hegel, Werke, Bd. I, pp. 50-112; Bd. V, pp. 126 ff; Bd. XV, pp. 486 ff. 



36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

was a general opposition to a demonstrative system, as we have 
already seen. It directed itself at times chiefly against Kant, re- 
garding him as the type of the philosophy of reflection. Thus 
Hoffding speaks of " a very significant opposition offered by a group 
of men who all, under different forms, maintained the significance 
of immediate feeling, and of historical tradition; speaking broadly, 
we may say they defended the undivided, concentrated activity of 
the spirit in opposition to Kant's analysis and criticism which led 
him, at so many points, to make sharp distinctions between elements 
which, as a matter of fact, are only given in indissoluble union. 
These men, for the most part, do Kant injustice; for they overlook 
the attempts which he himself made to reunite that which he had 
only put asunder for the sake of clearness, and the furtherance of 
investigation." 1 This opposition to Kant grew out of their opposi- 
tion to the philosophy of the Aufklantng, to which they thought he 
still belonged. They had come to distrust mere reason, and con- 
ceived logical thought to be abstract, and therefore divorced from 
the true, in immediate apprehension of which alone they thought 
knowledge could be gained. Hamann thought knowledge the most 
abstract form of our existence, and that only by means of feeling 
" do abstractions get hands, feet, or wings." 2 This extravagant 
view Jacobi adopted, and conceived that thought is not the true way 
of life, but that the way of life is mysterious (mystical), and not 
syllogistic, and not mechanical. 3 

Knowledge, then, does not depend primarily upon a reasoning 
process, according to Jacobi, but upon an immediate intuition. Con- 
cerning Allwill, through whom Jacobi speaks his own views, he 
says : " What he had investigated, he so sought to impress on him- 
self, that it should remain with him. All his mighty convictions 
rest upon immediate intuition." 4 To him, therefore, " the validity 
of the sensible evidence is superior to every rational conclusion." 5 
Everything depends on perception or intuition. This is excellent 
above all processes of inference ; for the latter cannot discover that 
anything is, but themselves presuppose a consciousness of the true 
upon which they rest. Understanding depends upon and is only 
the hand-maid of intuition, from which it receives all the material 
which it elaborates. Accordingly, " the purest and richest impres- 
sion has as a result the purest and richest reason/' 6 All the material 

1 Op. cit., Vol. II, p. no. 

2 Ibid., p. ii2. 
3 IV, a, p. 249. 

4 I, p. xiii. 

5 Zirngiebl, Jacobi s Leben, Dichten und Denken, p. 71. 
9 II, p. 270. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 37 

of knowledge comes through intuition (sense or reason), and is 
presented to the understanding. We cannot absolutely create any- 
thing by means of the understanding alone. Jacobi, therefore, 
thought Kant's search for purely a priori knowledge wholly futile. 
He did not see that Kant was not trying to discover knowledge 
which should be independent of all experience, but knowledge of 
a priori principles which entered into, and therefore were constitu- 
tive of, all experience. 

In opposition to the Sensationalists who held that all knowledge 
comes from sensation, and to Kant who held that pure a priori 
knowledge is possible, Jacobi maintained that the receptive part of 
mind is two-fold. First, there is sensibility, or the faculty of sense 
impression, which reveals objects of the external world immediately 
to the mind. Secondly, there is spiritual feeling or faith, 1 which 
he came later to call ' reason.' This was his own peculiar philosoph- 
ical position, and marks him off from others more than any other 
of his doctrines. He here used the word ' reason ' in a new and 
peculiar sense. Heretofore ' reason,' when different from the un- 
derstanding, had been used to denote a higher faculty of thought, 
a faculty which did more than elaborate the data of sense-impres- 
sion. There is, however, some historical warrant for Jacobi's use 
of the term, in that reason as thus used had denoted the faculty of 
the unconditioned. Kant had used it in this way, and had dealt with 
the problems of the Soul, Freedom, and God, calling them Ideas 
of Reason. 

His use of the words ' faith,' ' belief,' with reference to the same 
faculty and the assurance of its truthfulness, is likewise not alto- 
gether unlike previous uses of these words. Kant had used ' faith ' 
to denote that belief in the Ideas of Reason which persists beyond 
all the scepticism of the Dialectic. But Hume is the one who fur- 
nished to Jacobi the chief warrant for this use of the term. He uses 
'belief' to denote the assurance we have of the reality of objects, 
which are present to the senses, and thereby to distinguish knowl- 
edge from imagination. Faith or Belief is the name of that feeling 
of certainty which is attached to our knowledge of actual objects, 
and which distinguishes knowledge from imagination, which has to 
do only with fictions. 2 Belief, or Faith, then is the conviction we 
have of the actuality of the objects of perception, — a conviction 
which does not rest on proof. 3 And when this has reference to 

x il, p. 60. 

2 Ibid., pp. 144, 147, 148, 153, 156 ff . ; and Hume, Enquiry concerning Human 
Understanding, Section V, Part ii. 

3 IV, a, p. 210. 



38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

supersensible objects, it is an immediate reflection of the divine 
knowledge and will in the finite spirit of man. 1 Certainty pertains 
as much to reason and its objects, as to sense and its objects. Cer- 
tainty and reason go together. 2 From this direct assurance in in- 
tuition all certainty arises. " How can we strive for certainty un- 
less we are already in possession of some certainty? And how can 
it be known to us except by that which we already know with cer- 
tainty? This leads us to the idea of an immediate certainty, which 
needs no proof, but absolutely excludes all proof, being itself above 
the idea (Vorstellung) corresponding to the represented object, and 
hence having its reason in itself. The conviction from proof is a 
conviction at second hand; it rests on comparison, and can never 
be quite sure and complete." 3 

There are, then, two faculties of perception, Sense and Reason 
(or Faith). These two faculties are, for Jacobi, very much alike 
in form. First, they are alike in view of the nature of their revela- 
tions. Both reveal their objects immediately to knowledge, without 
the mediation of any process of proof. Secondly, they are alike in 
that they both bring to consciousness actual substantial objects. 
Thirdly, they are alike in view of the immediate certainty where- 
with they reflect their objects in consciousness. 4 They differ only 
in the objects which each reveals. Sense, on the one hand, reveals 
the sensible real, the real of the external world of sense objects. 
Reason, on the other hand, reveals the supersensible real, the real 
of the supersensible or spiritual objects. 5 The process of the first 
is an impression, and that of the second is a kind of feeling. The 
conceptions of the first are called objects; those of the second are 
called Ideas, 6 or, as Kant calls them, Ideas of Reason. To both of 
these is attached a certain feeling of actuality that enables one to 
distinguish the true from the false, truth from fiction. This feeling 
is Belief. But Jacobi was somewhat careless in his use of terms, 
and seems at times to call this assurance ' faith ' as well as ' feeling.' 
Consequently, ' faith ' represents not only the faculty of supersensu- 
ous knowledge, but also at times the assurance of the actuality of 
the objects of that knowledge. This is due to the double use of 
the word Glaube. 

It is thus easily seen, that, to Jacobi, the ' power of faith ' is a 

1 II, pp- 55-56. 
2 III, pp. 314-315. 

3 IV, a, p. 210. 

4 Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 271-2. 

5 II, p. 62. ^ 

6 Ibid., pp. 61-2. Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 272. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 39 

faculty above reason, 1 either in the earlier sense of reason as equiva- 
lent to understanding, or in the later as a power of perception of 
supersensible objects. For while it is reason that perceives, it is 
faith which gives certainty. Reason, as a perceptive faculty, pre- 
supposes the actual existence of the true ;' 2 and reveals to us the true, 
the good, and the beautiful. 3 The original light of reason, however, 
is faith/ i. e. } it is faith which gives the assurance that what the 
reason reveals is actuality and not fiction. 

Jacobi's plea, accordingly, was for the recognition of a faculty to 
which the supersensible shall be true, and not a mere fiction, — a 
faculty which shall recognize the true in and above phenomena, and 
which is different from sense and understanding. 5 This faculty, 
then, is reason, and it is an eye for spiritual things ; and he calls it the 
" soul-eye," as sense is the " appearance-eye." 6 He appeals to 
Socrates and Plato as authority for thus speaking of a higher reason, 
— a faculty which apprehends the spiritual. 7 But above this, again, 
is Faith, Belief, which is the assurance of the actuality of these 
objects. 

Reason, then, becomes the faculty of direct and immediate knowl 
edge, as Understanding is the faculty of indirect and mediate knowl- 
edge. 8 Knowledge of the former sort is in no way dependent upon 
proof, but is independent and above proof. 9 Here only are Provi- 
dence and Freedom truly known. 10 These man does not ordinarily 
dispute, for he naturally believes both his sense and his reason, since 
upon this acceptance depends all knowledge. 11 We are all born into 
faith just as we are born into society. 12 And all actuality, the cor- 
poreal which the senses reveal, as well as the spiritual which the 
reason reveals, is to man certified through Faith (Belief) alone. 
There is no certainty outside and above this. 13 

Reason, therefore, is not founded upon any power of demonstra- 
tion (understanding) ; but demonstration is founded upon reason. 

i II, p. i 4 . 
2 HI, p. 32. 
3 II, p. 72. 

4 IV, a, p. xlii. 

5 II, p. 73- 

6 Ibid., p. 74. 

7 Ibid., p. 72. 

8 Ibid., p. 1 01. 

9 Ibid., p. 106. 

10 Ibid. 

11 Ibid., p. 108. 
12 IV, a, p. 210. 
13 II, pp. 108-9. 



40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

With this begins knowledge and science, i. e., they begin with the 
material furnished by sense and reason as faculties of perception. 1 
But Jacobi did not develop this further knowledge as we might wish ; 
he seemed satisfied to leave it less organized than the spirit of his 
system would permit. His indisposition to systematize what he 
conceived to be the revelations of reason is no doubt due to his 
vein of mysticism, which was a relic of his early Pietistic training. 
He seemed afraid to analyze carefully, lest he should lose the actual 
in the thought, the true in the truth. This defect was the result of 
his inherent distrust of the understanding, which he conceived could 
not deal faithfully with the supersensible, but would turn it into false- 
hood. The understanding was to him a faculty of the conditioned; 
while the Ideas of Reason were unconditioned, and were therefore 
outside the sphere of the understanding. 

This immediacy of reason Jacobi took to be the starting-point of 
philosophy, and in this he differed greatly from Hegel, who regarded 
such an immediacy as the result of thought, *. e., as thought's highest 
attainment rather than its beginning. To Jacobi, however, reason 
(Vernunft) constitutes the data of all thought (Verstand), and with- 
out this we get only empty form without content. 2 " All human 
knowledge proceeds from revelation and faith." 3 " The element of 
all human knowledge and activity is faith." 4 This knowledge is 
possible to man because he is spirit, and to him, therefore, the Giver 
of that spirit can be present, — more present to his heart than nature 
is to his outward senses. The true, the beautiful, and the good are 
more to his inner sense than sensible objects are to his outer sense. 5 
Jacobi accordingly conceived that we believe in God " because we 
see Him," though he is not visible to the bodily eye. Yet He is 
an appearance to every high and noble man. And, moreover, 
" ' nothing is more like God,' says Socrates through Plato, ' than 
that one among us who is most righteous.' " 6 

The truth of intuition, then, is in the fact that the objects them- 
selves are revealed directly to us. It is the intuition of reason which 
affords us a knowledge of supersensible objects, that is, affords 
us assurance of their reality and truth. Jacobi called his philosophy 
the philosophy of pure objective feeling, because it recognizes the 
authority of this feeling as the highest, and builds upon this 

ill, p. in. 

2 Ibid., p. 112. 

3 III, p. xxxiii. 

4 IV, a, p. 223. 

5 II, pp. 1 14-120. 
6 Ibid., p. 120. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 4* 

authority. 1 " All actuality, the corporeal which reveals itself to the 
senses, as well as the spiritual which reveals itself to the reason, is 
authenticated in man only through feeling; there is no authority 
outside of or above this." 2 

It is in this faculty of supersensuous feeling (which Jacobi later 
called reason) that man finds his peculiar character. It is this alone 
which makes him superior to animals. " The impression, however, 
which grounds knowledge in the sensuous intuition (called the 
proper knowledge) is as little superior to feeling [reason], which 
grounds knowledge in faith, as the order of animals is superior to 
the order of men, the material world to the intellectual, or nature to 
its author." 3 This " rational intuition "* is man's peculiar power, 
and " it is solely and alone by the proprium of reason that man is 
elevated above mere animal being." Jacobi thus showed that he 
saw clearly the distinction between man and animal, between knowl- 
edge and instinct, between the process of thought and the process of 
nature. We may not think he gave a completely satisfactory ac- 
count of the distinction, but he certainly saw the great difference. 
And to have seen this distinction at a time when one man could say, 
and a school of thought could practically believe, that the ' brain 
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,' 5 was a very important 
advance for thought, and, indeed, the first great step toward a true 
philosophy of mind which should recognize man's power of self- 
consciousness as that which marks him off from all other orders of 
terrestrial existence. To Jacobi, then, man is not merely a higher 
species of animal, not a member of a mechanical order of nature, 
not a monad or member of a graduated order, as with Leibniz, but, 
in view of his reason and his knowledge, he is something absolutely 
different from nature. Jacobi reached, in fact, the modern point of 
view, in which it is held that the knowledge of nature cannot be 
itself a part of nature, 6 and in which there is held to be a complete 
distinction between knowledge and nature. 

The knowledge which comes through feeling in this way, Jacobi 
called ' revelation.' And in accordance with this he affirmed two 

UI, p. 61. 

2 Ibid. j pp. 108-9. 

3 Ibid., p. 60. 
* Ibid., p. 59- 

5 Cabanis (175 7-1 808). Cf. Hoffding, op. cit., II, p. 300. 

6 Cf. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 11 : " Can the knowledge of nature 
be itself a part or product of nature, in that sense of nature in which it is said to 
be an object of knowledge? This is our first question. If it is answered in the 
negative, we shall at least have satisfied ourselves that man, in respect of the 
function called knowledge, is not merely a child of nature." 



42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

principles : First, that " without all revelation (every original thing 
in feeling) man would stand in the series of animals, the most ra- 
tional indeed, and first, but also the most essentially wild and un- 
happy." And second, that " without free use and proper under- 
standing of divine truth, man would be degraded to a mere blind 
tool. And as a blind tool, to what conceivable purpose? and de- 
graded wherefrom? Here vanishes all thought." But this revela- 
tion is not directly to knowledge, but to feeling (reason) and so 
needs careful interpretation. " The original revelation of God to 
mankind is no revelation in image and word, but a dawning in the 
inner feeling. . . . And the divinely imparted truth can, therefore, 
be misunderstood, it can be darkened and misconceived." 1 

It will thus be seen that to Jacobi the first step in knowledge is 
the revelation or the experience of the self, which as a given fact 
stands above all proof or demonstration. Some principles thus need 
no proof, for all things which can be brought to proof are already 
in conviction, and need no proof. Such is ' I am.' This is itself 
immediate, and upon it all others depend. 2 The business of the 
philosopher, then, is not to build up or to deduce experience, but 
merely to give an interpretation of the content of the original reve- 
lation, or experience. 

There are then two phases in man's consciousness, the conditioned 
and the unconditioned. The former is the element of sense, or of 
nature, and the latter the element of reason, or the supernatural. 
Of the latter we have a better idea than of the former.' 3 " One can 
call sense and reason the material origins of knowledge, and the 
understanding the formal. They are the organs through which the 
sensible and the supersensible objects come into human conscious- 
ness, with the witness, accordingly, for their objective validity." 4 
The understanding works only upon the materials of knowledge 
thus given, and out of these produces the systematic form of knowl- 
edge which can come only after experience. It is a Nachsinnen, 
and has to do only with that which perception brings forward. 
Much of the language of Jacobi in this and similar connections would 
lead one to think that he denied in toto the possibility of synthetic 
judgments a priori. He spoke of the necessity of the experience 
of the true as the prerequisite of the knowledge which is truth. 
This, strictly interpreted, would mean that knowledge must always 
follow experience, and that it could never anticipate experience. 

i III, p. XX. 

2 V, pp. 1 21-2,. Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 140. 

3 IV, b, pp. 152-5. 

4 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 270. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 43 

From this it becomes evident that Jacobi never saw the true nature 
of synthetic judgments. He conceived synthesis as but a form of 
thought elaboration, forever moving within a circumscribed area. 
He did not see that synthetic judgments can give a real connection 
of thought between data and conclusion, i. e., can pass with cer- 
tainty from the given to what the given involves. Had he perceived 
this he would have found synthesis just the instrument for his pur- 
pose, for he could thus have reached by thought what he saw no 
way to reach but by perception. 1 

Faith, then, was to Jacobi a natural belief in the reality of the 
objects of knowledge which are revealed to sense and reason. Rev- 
elation is possible only in respect to real objects. Reason (faith), 
is the faculty of setting before us that which is itself true, good, and 
beautiful, with perfect certainty of its objective validity. 2 " Reason 
plainly presupposes the true, as the outer sense space, and the inner 
sense time, and exists only as the faculty of this presupposition. So 
that where this presupposition is wanting there is no reason. The 
true must therefore be possessed by man just as certainly as he 
possesses reason." 3 

Like Descartes and modern philosophy generally, Jacobi found 
the first foothold of certainty in the individual, — in the knowledge 
which the conscious self has of its experiences. " The root of all 
evidence is in the clear consciousness of a perception; we see our- 
selves only in a mirror." 4 The presence of the true and the actual 
to the soul which realizes its own being is itself all the evidence 
which can be given or is required. This immediate union of the 
true with truth or with knowledge is the only principle of certainty, 
and by it alone being and thought hold together. 

This recognition of knowledge as containing actuality is a very 
important point to notice; for it is on this rock that so many philo- 
sophical systems have gone to pieces. The Sensationalists made 
the internal sensation the only thing of which there was any cer- 
tainty, and therefore found it impossible to give any account of the 
world of objects, either sensible or supersensible. Some of the 
idealists had made the idea everything, and were similarly unable 
to get a real objective world. While, on the other hand, the mate- 
rialists, having made the object the only real thing, were accord- 
ingly unable to get any true subject, not even a subject for their real 

1 Vide supra, p. 31. Cf. Appendix to David Hume, " Ueber d. transcendentalen 
Idealismus," Werke, II, pp. 291-310. 
2 II, p. 11. 
3 Ibid., p. 1 01. 
* VI, p. 201. 



44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

object. It would be too much to say that Jacobi gave a sufficient 
account of the problem, or that he completely saw the solution, but 
he at least pointed the way to Hegel and the modern logicians who 
see that knowledge is a subject-object relation, and that in the judg- 
ment the mind is related directly to reality, and that our primary 
judgments are founded upon this immediate relation of mind to its 
object. 1 To separate mind and its object is to make a division which 
no subsequent effort can overcome. 

But Jacobi did not feel quite sure that he had established the 
objective validity of the judgment, against the older empiricists and 
dogmatists. He still thought he had to assure himself by the forcible 
means of a ' salto mortale! Having been entangled in the meshes 
of the subjectivism of the current empirical philosophy, and the 
demonstrative uncertainties of the dogmatic schools, he felt that he 
had not quite extricated himself. He thought he was on the firm 
and safe ground of direct perception in his doctrine of immediacy, 
but he could not see its relation to the earlier uncertain ground of 
reflection or demonstration. He thought that from the sphere of 
the understanding to that of reason there was no open way; to get 
from one to the other required a leap in the dark. When once a 
person finds himself on the dizzy heights of speculation, there is no 
way back but to cast one's self into the abyss of faith. 2 The under- 
standing in its self-sufficiency thinks there is no way to the actual, 
but faith separates itself from understanding, and throws itself im- 
mediately upon the actual. We must say, then, that " therefore — 
this is the salto — every principle of mediate knowledge and wisdom 
must be false, and the opposite necessarily true, i. e., there are im- 
mediate truths, and the knowledge of the objective being of things 
is one of them." 3 

The foundation of all knowledge was thus, to Jacobi, intui- 
tion or immediacy. The understanding, however, as an elabora- 
tive faculty, works only upon ' the given ' of sense perception, and 
produces science. The unconditioned being is equally ' given,' but 
does not submit itself to the understanding. " All scientific thought 
is mediate, and presupposes an immediate which itself cannot con- 
ceive. ... It is the icp&rov' <pe.udo<z of the rationalistic Aufklarung 
to believe only what can be scientifically proven. Unconditional 
being can never be proven, but only immediately felt. 4 

It is evident that Jacobi did not admit that sciences could be made 

1 Cf. Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 76 ff. 

2 Cf. Piinjer, op. cit., p. 632. 

3 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 82. Cf. Jacobi, IV, a, pp. xxxix-xl, 59. 

4 Windelband, op. cit., II, p. 335. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 45 

out of the material of both kinds of perception. Science is possible 
only in the region of the conditioned, as this alone can be presented 
to the understanding. The knowledge which comes from the per- 
ception of the supersensible constitutes philosophy in the proper 
sense of the term, but not philosophy as a science. This arbitrary 
limitation of the word ' science ' was due to the current ideal of 
exactness which mathematics had furnished to science, — a method 
which could be applied only to the sciences of nature. The uncon- 
ditioned or the supersensible is, therefore, not a proper sphere for 
the understanding, which, as a faculty of the conditioned, can oper- 
ate only on sense material. But, to Jacobi, the understanding re- 
mained the only faculty of explanation or interpretation ; therefore, 
any attempt at a formulation of the knowledge received through 
reason must necessarily be by means of the understanding. In his 
psychology there is no other faculty to which this task can be al- 
lotted. He was therefore cut off from any systematization of the 
content of philosophy by his own view of mind. He was conscious 
of this limitation, and accordingly tried to content himself without 
a definite exposition of his doctrines of the supersensible, and to 
limit himself to little more than bare affirmations of content. This 
renders an exposition of his views peculiarly difficult, not only for 
himself but also for the critic. But he did not remain true to his 
self-made limitations, and as a consequence we have a rather full 
exposition of some phases of his philosophy. This is particularly 
true of his later writings, where, to some extent, he got beyond his 
earlier limitations. But at present we are concerned not with the 
content, but only with the form of his immediacy. 

Jacobi's faith may be called ' Natural Faith,' as distinguished 
from Kant's ' Rational Faith.' Jacobi's ' faith ' is directed to a cer- 
tain given actuality, which is revealed to us immediately. Kant's 
' faith ' is a certainty grounded only in our practical nature. To 
Jacobi, reason was immediate perception of the supersensible ; while 
to Kant reason was no immediacy, but only a higher process of 
mediation than the understanding. According to Kant, the ' rea- 
son ' which Jacobi conceived is impossible. 1 To Kant, also, ' faith ' 
was not, as to Jacobi, the assurance of the presence of the actual 
objects, but only the belief in the far-off actuality of the objects. 
Kant's ' faith ' is a faith which arises in Practical Reason, and as 
such is an inference; while Jacobi conceived of faith as a form of 
immediacy in which the objects reveal themselves to us directly. 
" Faith is the adumbration of the divine knowing and willing in the 

1 Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neneren Philosophic, Bd. V, p. 227. 
4 



46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

finite spirit of man." 1 For both, faith or belief was the end of phi- 
losophy, — knowledge must be transcended in the exercise of faith. 
But with Jacobi, philosophy must also begin with faith. For the 
material furnished by faith and reason as a form of perception is 
the content out of which philosophy as such is constructed. It is 
reason and faith, then, which reach the highest objects, while sci- 
ence or understanding is confined to sense objects. But the under- 
standing receives the revelations of the reason, for " the conscious- 
ness of the reason and its revelations is possible only in an under- 
standing.'' 2 Science, then, does not itself reach the highest truths, 
for these can be reached only by reason. 3 So that "this part of 
mind [understanding] sees only with concepts what the other 
[reason] does not see; it is with seeing eyes blind, as the other with 
blind eyes sees." 4 

In reason, then, rather than in understanding, the supersensible 
objects are reached. And of these faith gives the assurance that 
they are actual and not cobwebs of the brain. Faith, then, contains 
the assurance : first, of our own ego, and its states, as the common 
basis of all our experiences, and the foundation of all our further 
faith ; 5 secondly, of the reality of external sensible things, the knowl- 
edge of which it is the peculiar business of the understanding to 
construct into the various sciences of nature; 6 thirdly, and chiefly, 
of the supersensible world of God, Freedom, and Immortality. 
These are the peculiar and proper objects of philosophy. 

This does not leave mind a mere passive function, a mirror, as 
Professor Wilde seems to think. 7 Jacobi expressly says he does not 
regard mind as passive. Nor does his doctrine necessitate such a 
view. Reason, he says, is not a light, it is an eye. Again, he says 
it is no dead mirror. 8 He merely makes reason an active faculty 
of perception rather than, as usual, a faculty of inference. But as 
perception is always regarded as active, therefore reason must be 
active. Then he assigned to understanding all the elaborative proc- 
esses of the mind, which have usually been considered as belonging 
to mind as a whole. This, however, is not the same as making 
reason passive, but, on the contrary, leaves it an active perception. 

Nor do we regard the interpretation of the same writer as cor- 

>II, P- 55- 

2 Ibid., pp. 9-10. 

3 III, pp. 26-7. 

4 Ibid., p. 108. 

5 V, pp. 121-3. Cf. Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 246. 

6 IV, a, p. 211 ; II, p. 141 ff. 

7 C/. Wilde, F. H. lacobi, pp. 48-49. Cf. Jacobi, II, p. 272. 

8 II, p. 266. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 47 

rect, when he says that Jacobi is a Realist in the sense that he 
makes the object more than the subject. If we are to speak of 
Jacobi in this way at all, we need to remember that the principles 
and objects of faith are not ' objects ' in the materialist's sense, but 
that, on the contrary, the supersensible objects of the spiritual world 
are to him the true objects. Jacobi regarded God as more than the 
individual subject; and in so far as God is an 'object' to the indi- 
vidual, Jacobi is a realist, — but he is a spiritualistic realist. On the 
other hand, he conceived God to be the infinite subject, and all other 
things to have their reality in Him, and, therefore, may be equally 
well regarded as a spiritualistic idealist. There is no warrant for 
calling him a realist in the sense of materialistic realist. He agreed 
with the idealists rather than with the realists in his view of the 
ultimate constitution of the universe; for he held that spirit, not 
matter, is the logical prius and the final meaning of all things. 

The interpretation which the same writer gives of Jacobi's view 
of perception seems also to come short of adequacy. He says that 
Jacobi's doctrine of immediate knowledge " is really the attempt to 
rid knowledge of the thought element in it." 1 This would be true 
only of Jacobi's earlier expositions of perception, where he called it 
a form of feeling ; but it is the contention of this Study that his later 
adoption of the word ' reason ' in place of ' feeling ' is a recognition, 
or a restoration, of the thought element in reason or judgment. The 
fact, too, that, while at first Hegel criticised Jacobi as placing truth 
in feeling, he later came to think more favorably of him, is evidence 
that Hegel recognized Jacobi as understanding by reason not only 
feeling but thought. 2 Instead, then, of attempting to rid perception 
of the thought element, Jacobi's later writings, at least, fully recog- 
nized this element. In order to knowledge the object requires the 
activity of the subject, and this is a thought element. 

Jacobi's view of perception is, then, but the early crude form 
of the doctrine of judgment as a subject-object relation, — a doctrine 
which is now a common-place in epistemology. Earlier epistemo- 
logy had separated subject and object in the very first process of 
knowledge, so that knowledge was defined as the comparison of 
ideas. Later it was regarded as a comparison of the idea with 
the object. Both of these forms left knowledge hanging in the air. 
Jacobi was one of the first to see, though somewhat confusedly we 
admit, that knowledge consists of relations in which subject and 
object are given in the one act of thought. Such an epistemology 
has no longer to ask and answer the impossible question, Is our 

1 Wilde, op. cit., p. 57. Cf. pp. 57-60. 

2 Levy-Bruhl, La philosophie de Jacobi, p. 257. 



48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

knowledge a knowledge of reality? So long as this question was 
necessary, philosophy made no progress, for it was never sure that 
it was not all a fiction of the imagination. 

The fact, then, that " in his psychology Jacobi made Verstand 
wholly subordinate to the two perceptive faculties, Vermmft and 
Sinn," 1 should not be taken to involve the passivity of mind. For 
it must be remembered that to him Verstand was only a faculty of 
inferences and elaboration, and that, accordingly, Vermmft and Sinn 
are active functions of perception and judgment. It can be cor- 
rect to say that " the object is not constituted for us by thought," 2 
only if we mean the thought of the individual ; but the statement 
is misleading if it be meant that the object of knowledge for the 
individual contains no thought element. On the contrary, Jacobi 
held that thought (spirit) is constitutive of all things. He saw only 
less clearly than Kant that knowledge consists in a subject-object 
relation, — that in every act of knowledge the mind acts upon a given 
object, which object has its reality only as it is the expression of 
mind. 

The part of Jacobi's doctrine of immediacy which most directly 
challenges the ordinary view is his claim that God and Freedom and 
Immortality are known in direct perception. Kant had left these 
objects only problematical in the Kritik der reinen Vermmft, but had 
tried to establish them in the Praktischen Vermmft. Jacobi was not 
satisfied, however, that what can be but a fiction to Pure Reason can 
be a fact to Practical Reason ; and, having discarded all methods of 
demonstration, he sought to find these objects in rational perception 
or intuition, — a method inconceivable to either the senses or the 
understanding. Here, then, we see Jacobi adopting what he con- 
sidered the only starting-point for philosophy, and, as we have seen, 
what actually was the starting-point of both Descartes and Spinoza. 
But Jacobi did not think the revelations of reason could be elaborated 
into a science, but must stand in their bare isolation. However, after 
coming to see that supersensible perception must not only be feeling, 
but also reason, he looked with more favor upon a systematic phi- 
losophy, and in his later writings, particularly in his General Intro- 
duction to his collected works, we find a more complete presenta- 
tion of his doctrine. 

Two distinct purposes are evidently confused in the mind of 
Jacobi. The first is to furnish a working plan of life, — a practical 
program of life and conduct. The other is to give a philosophical 
theory of life. Not that these two could not be given together, for 

1 Wilde, op. cit., p. 60. 

2 Ibid., p. 61. 



THE DOCTRINE OF IMMEDIACY. 49 

it is doubtful if they could be kept apart. Theory inevitably has its 
effect on life, and life on theory; but to hold the two in confusion 
is not the only way of holding them together. His mysticism and 
his view of thought as abstract led him to fear to bring the wealth 
of rational intuition to the full light of understanding. Hence his 
early doctrine was intensely individualistic, and this he did not en- 
tirely shake off even in the latest form which he gave to it. He 
never could quite free himself from the idea that to bring reason to 
understanding would be to place it among conditioned objects, and 
hence to rob it of its spiritual character. But just so far as he was 
influenced by this conception, he failed to see the universal character 
of thought. In this, however, Jacobi was not conscious of trying 
to separate the spiritual from thought, but only from science, the 
sphere of the understanding. In this unwarranted distinction be- 
tween Science and Philosophy, then, he did not sever part of our life 
from thought, but only made a dualism in our thought. But if 
there is to be a unity in man, there must be a unity in mental func- 
tions. But, as we have seen, Jacobi himself saw this necessity, and 
though he never healed the dualism, he made it of less and less 
importance in his doctrine. 

In other words, there is a growing consciousness throughout 
Jacobi's works that these higher reaches of knowledge which he 
calls feeling, reason, and faith, cannot be different from, but are 
only higher forms of thought. As Hegel says, " How belief and 
intuition, when transformed to these higher regions, differ from 
thought, it is impossible for any one to say." 1 In other words, these 
functions as forms of thought cannot be regarded as bare immedi- 
acy, as Jacobi was inclined to regard them. Like all thought, they 
must be the joint product of immediacy and mediation, and as such 
are susceptible of the same systematic treatment and organization. 
If they contribute to our thought at all, they must submit to media- 
tion in the very act of being taken into that thought. The same 
may be said of the immediate knowledge of moral and religious 
principles. If these exclude mediation entirely, then they should 
be quite independent of all development and education, and should 
be clear and distinct from the outset, just as the opponents of In- 
nate Ideas saw, and as even the upholders of that doctrine came 
later to see. To be fully and completely immediate would be to 
have no relation whatever to the other parts of our knowledge, and 
therefore not to knowledge at all. It is evident, then, that what he 
claimed to be immediate could not be so in the full meaning of the 
term. 

1 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 125. 



50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBL 

If Jacobi's view of immediacy were possible at all, it would ren- 
der .^//-consciousness impossible. At most he could have thought, 
only on the plane of consciousness. For pure immediacy means that 
thought has to do merely with the content, and not with the rela- 
tion of the content to the self. But thought thinks itself, and 
this is what we mean by self-consciousness. All this would be im- 
possible if pure immediacy were the form of thought. Religion and 
morality would never know themselves as such, but would be sunk 
in the depths of their very richness of content. All this Jacobi felt 
in a way; and only in so far as he got beyond the standpoint of 
immediacy did he formulate a philosophy at all. His limitation 
consists largely in the fact that he never entirely overcame this view, 
— never saw the true relations of immediacy and mediation in 
thought. He accordingly made abstractions of the two mental 
processes, and separated them without ever seeing his way to a more 
fundamental reconciliation. 

Jacobi's service, however, consisted in showing that there is an ele- 
ment of immediacy in thought. Earlier philosophy had conceived 
that mediation was the only element in thought. For instance, 
Spinoza, though recognizing immediacy as the starting-point of phi- 
losophy, made no further use of it, except at those few times when it 
did not enter into his system. All the dogmatists had regarded 
thought as purely mediate, and therefore abstract. Jacobi showed 
that there was an element of immediacy in thought, and that thought 
was therefore concrete. But he did not see the full significance of 
his contribution, and therefore did not set it forth adequately, 
defining it constantly in its negative relation to mediation. Hegel, 
however, saw its meaning, and for the first time in modern philos- 
ophy, he set forth thought in its full concreteness. But the element 
Jacobi contributed was a necessary part of the synthesis. 



CHAPTER IV. 
JACOBI'S REALISM, OR HIS DOCTRINE OF ACTUALITY. 

As a diligent, and generally sympathetic, student of Empiricism, 
Jacobi saw clearly that it tended logically to an idealism, which is 
called variously psychological or subjective idealism. The a pos- 
teriori methods of Empiricism Jacobi never called in question. Its 
strict individualism he considered the only philosophical position pos- 
sible. For every fact, every truth, in order to be valid, must be 
attested by the experience of the individual. But from the stand- 
point of Sensationalism, what the individual knows is only his own 
subjective sensations and ideas. i\nd, as Hume says, these arise 
" from unknown causes." 

Accordingly, the problem which presented itself to the Scottish 
School and to Kant, and which they did not fully solve, was the 
same which to Jacobi also seemed the all-important problem, namely, 
to find some basis for our sensations and ideas, so that out of them 
we can construct a world of objects, sensible and supersensible. It 
should be recalled that Jacobi had reached the formulation of this 
problem largely from his study of the Scottish School, for he seems 
to have been no less acquainted with Reid than with Hume, and 
that he had the outline of his own doctrine formulated some years 
before Kant published the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in 1781. 

Jacobi reached somewhat the same conclusion as Reid, namely, 
that the existence of the external world cannot be proved by any 
line of reasoning based upon sensation, but must be given imme- 
diately in sensation, if at all. He thought he found an irresolvable 
conviction or belief, which attaches to sensation, that there is a real 
external world of objects which is the cause of our sensations and 
ideas. He held that this belief must be accepted as well founded, 
for only thus can philosophy make any real progress, or even get 
started at all. If this is not taken for granted, then all our ideas 
and connections are illusions, mere cobwebs of the brain, with no 
validity in fact, and hence of no value to us either for life or for 
philosophy. For unless truth be but the presentation of the true, 
then all is fiction, and hence delusion. 

It was because Jacobi thought that the Critical Philosophy failed 
to meet the difficulty — did not give assurance of the world of objects 

5 1 



52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

— that he found it necessary to oppose not only Kantianism, but all 
similar forms of idealism. These he considered to be all alike sub- 
jective. It was only after what he took to be the failure of idealism 
to refute Hume that Jacobi was led to make the most explicit formu- 
lations of his own views on this subject. These appear in the 
two criticisms of Kantianism : first, the appendix to the second 
edition of David Hume iiber den Glauben, written under the title, 
" Ueber den transcendentalen Idealismus " ; and second, Ueber das 
Unternehmen des Kriticismns, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu brin- 
gen. The former, however, contains the best and most searching 
■criticism on this particular subject, and it is also the one which best 
defines his own views. 

It is in this sense, then, that we call Jacobi a Realist. He believed 
that there is an existence outside of thought, into relation with which 
thought must be brought. The understanding does not make nature ; 
at least, not the understanding of the individual. To him nature is 
external and real, for to it the thought of the individual must con- 
form. But, as we saw in the last chapter, his realism is not ultimate 
— it not finally metaphysical, but psychological. He believed that, 
while to the individual knower the world is opposed as a true real, 
it nevertheless depends upon God for its ultimate being and consti- 
tution. 1 That he did not regard himself as an ordinary realist is 
seen by the fact that he called his view a Real Rationalism, while that 
of others he called merely Nominal Rationalism. These latter, 
however, have given him the name of Feeling or Faith-philosopher, 
and, as he says, this will have to remain. 2 

His criticism of Idealism largely takes the form of a polemic 
against Kant, and becomes at times very keen and-, searching. He 
was, in fact, the first to see the tendency of the Kritik in this direc- 
tion. This is acknowledged by critics and historians generally. " If 
anyone has succeeded in discovering the weaknesses which were hid- 
den in Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and in the whole Critical 
Philosophy built thereon, then it would appear that that one is F. H. 
Jacobi." 3 Pfleiderer says that Jacobi's significance lies in his acute 
polemic against the one-sidedness of subjective idealism, and 
abstract rationalism, and in his assertion of direct experience as 
the ultimate source of real knowledge. 4 In the same spirit 
Harms remarks : " It is the merit of Jacobi that he was the 
first to show the contradiction in the doctrine of Kant, by the 

1 II, pp. 273-4. 

2 Ibid., p. 12. 

2 Zirngiebl, Jacobi's Leben, Dichten und Denken, p. iv. 

4 Philosophy of Religion, Vol. I, p. 226. 



JACOBFS REALISM. 53 

solution of which mainly German philosophy has advanced beyond 
the criticism of Kant. 1 Kuno Fischer says that Jacobi was the 
first to see that the Kantian philosophy was pure idealism, and 
that it could not affirm the thing-in-itself. Thence arises the realism 
of the thing-in-itself, not as an object of knowledge, but of faith; 
not a dogmatic, but a natural, immediate, necessary faith which is 
one with feeling. 2 Jacobi says that Kantianism is pure idealism. 
Space and time are subjective, and, as all objects are in space and 
time, they, too, must be merely subjective. We think of them as 
external, but it is only an idea of externality, not true externality. 
This we must say of all empirical objects. Jacobi, accordingly, says 
that Descartes's Cogito ergo sum is the standpoint of the subjective 
idealist. This is a universal idealism, for it has only one side, ' 1/ 
into which all things are sunk. It is therefore a nihilism of all 
objectivity, and results in a system of absolute subjectivity. 3 . 

These views of the Critical Philosophy were formed by Jacobi 
after reading the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vemunft, 
and were not modified by the second edition. Jacobi thought the 
second edition was not an improvement, but that the first edition 
really expressed the logical form of Kant's doctrine, and that the 
famous " Refutation of Idealism " which Kant added to the second 
edition was aside from the system. Jacobi believed that this refuta- 
tion was called forth by his own criticisms of Kant; and to make 
these more explicit, he added the appendix on the Critical Philosophy 
to the second edition of his David Hume uber den Glauberi.* But 
that Jacobi furnished the direct occasion of the refutation is not 
generally conceded. The occasion is usually thought to have been 
the book-reviews of the Kritik, notably that by Garve and Feder. 5 

Jacobi says that Kant showed that the old style of philosophy could 
not penetrate, nor go beyond, the clouds of sensibility, and that 
whatever knowledge we were supposed to have beyond that sphere 
could not be proved to have any objective validity. In other words, 
Kant proved knowledge to be merely phenomenal. 6 This philosophy, 
which, as we have seen, Jacobi calls nominal rationalism, can then 
grasp nothing certain above the world of sense. If it attempts to 
do so, it grasps what to it are only shadows. 7 He thought Kant was 
no more successful than Hume in establishing the reality of external 

1 Die Philosophie seit Kant, p. 94. 

2 Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Bd. V, p. 217. 

*Ibid., pp. 221-222. 

*Cf. II, pp. 291-2. 

5 Cf. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, Eng. trans., pp. 232 ff. 

6 II, pp. 16-17. 

7 Ibid., pp. 21, 36. 



54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

objects. Jacobi thought that objects, according to Kant, can be 
nothing but subjective determinations of the spirit, mere ideas, and 
nothing but ideas. The empirical reality which Kant gives to 
objects really confers no objective reality. 1 The Kantian philosophy, 
therefore, abandons the spirit of its system when it speaks about 
objects outside us making impressions on our senses. For objects 
are only phenomena, and, as phenomena, are only in us. 2 Nor can 
anything be known about transcendental objects. The Ideas of 
Reason, at best, are but problematical, and depend entirely on our 
thought, and can never be the objects of experience. 3 

Yet the Kantian philosophy cannot get started without objects 
impressing the senses, for sensibility has a meaning only in reference 
to objects. 4 Jacobi says the want of a real object troubled him 
greatly in studying Kant, for (and this is one of his fine passages) 
without the presupposition of objects one could not enter the 
Kantian system, and with that presupposition could not remain in 
it. 5 We could never know anything about objects if they did exist, 
especially transcendental objects ; nor could we ever know their 
relations to actual objects of experience. 6 That the empirical objects 
which we know should have in reality this objective being, depends 
on our imagination, which is a blind power joining the before and 
the after. Our knowledge, then, has no objective validity, for it does 
not in reality refer to anything but ourselves. 7 Even principles, then, 
such as Sufficient Reason, have no meaning in reference to real 
objects, but only in reference to phenomenal objects. 8 It therefore 
reduces to this absurdity : that no objects are really outside us, not 
even the laws which we consider to govern our understanding. 
Objects and laws are all subjective, and have no objective validity. 9 
Words, then, must have a peculiar and mystical meaning, for they 
have been taken to imply a real objectivity. But if the Kantian 
philosophy were true, how could. they ever have got such a meaning? 
Perhaps it is because in explaining phenomena we feel ourselves to 
be passive. But this is only half the necessary condition; 10 for we 
must remember that causation is a principle of the transcendental, 

1 II, p. 299. 

2 Ibid., pp. 301-2. 
8 Ibid., p. 302. 

4 Ibid., p. 303. 

5 Ibid., p. 304. 

6 Ibid., p. 305. 

7 Ibid., p. 306. 

8 Ibid., p. 307. 

9 Ibid., p. 308. 
10 Ibid., pp. 308-9. 



JACOBI'S REALISM. 55 

and not of the empirical understanding, and as such has no applica- 
tion to the world of experience. Here the whole idealistic system 
falls to the ground. 1 

Jacobi likewise maintained that Post-Kantianism is equally sub- 
jective, and that, in fact, the half -idealism of Kant finds its logical 
completion only in Fichte. But Fitche's mistake is in taking the 
1 1 ' as the only real in the ' I-not-I ' relation. This is the logical 
position, however, for a Kantian, though it is a mistake to take one 
as the only real, when the two are given together in inseparable 
union. They must both be real together. 2 But with such subjective 
idealism there can be nothing real outside us, and there can therefore 
be no faculty for such a non-existent. Sensibility, which should be 
such a medium, has no meaning. Against such subjective idealism, 
Jacobi opposed real objectivity, holding that things are actually 
present outside us, and that we know them with immediate certainty. 
They depend on no proof, but on faith, and faith cannot be proved. 
The certainty of such objects can be given only by an immediate 
revelation, and not by idea ; for in the latter case we would be certain 
only of the idea, and not of the object. And this would be only 
idealism, not realism. 3 

We thus see that Jacobi did not regard thought as the one 
fundamental determination of all being and of all truth. All 
thought is an individual characteristic. All knowledge depends on 
being, and there is no self-consciousness where there is no self-being, 
i. e. t where there is no individual. The individual is the all. Rea- 
son is but the manifestation of that which already exists. 4 Where 
unity, real individuality, ceases, there all existence ceases ; and when 
we represent as an individual that which is no individual, we are 
introducing our own unity into a mere aggregate. The individual 
is the real. And " the indivisible in any being determines its indi- 
viduality, or makes it a real whole ; and all those beings whose mani- 
fold we see inseparably united in a unity, and which we can only 
distinguish according to this unity, are called individuals. (We 
may assume or not that the principle of their unity has conscious- 
ness.)" 5 

It is evident that Jacobi's starting-point was not knowledge 
(thought), but life. Very often he made no distinction between 
the two; but wherever he did, it is to be noticed that he regarded 

*II, p. 309. 

2 Cf. Pfleiderer, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 226-7, and Punjer, op. cit., p. 631. 

3 Cf. K. Fischer, op. cit., Bd. V, pp. 222, 223, 225. 

4 Cf. Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 2-3. 

5 II, p. 209. 



56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

life as the fundamental, while thought is but a reflection of that life 
which is the primary real. The living thing is primary, and pos- 
sesses the thought, which latter to Jacobi is a Nachsinnen. Before 
anything can have being for another, i. e., before it can be thought, 
it must first have being for itself, i. e., life. 1 Such an individual 
(a self-determining one) must be something in and for itself, 
else it would never be anything for another, nor be able to re- 
ceive this or that chance determination. It must exert power in 
and for itself, else it were impossible that any result should 
arise through it, or even appear in it. 2 And just as is life, so is 
consciousness or knowledge. The latter is always a function of the 
former. " Life and consciousness are one. The higher degree of 
consciousness depends on the greater number and nature of the 
perceptions united in consciousness. Every perception expresses 
at the same time something external and something internal, both 
in relation to each other. Every perception is consequently in itself 
a concept. As the action, so the reaction. If the power of receiv- 
ing impressions is so manifold and complete that an articulate echo 
rises in consciousness, then there arises above the impression the 
Word. There appears what we call Reason, what we call Person." 3 
Jacobi was not, of course, a crass realist or materialist, but rather 
a dualist with a spiritualistic tendency. He regarded objects as 
real, but not so real as spirits. It is not thought and things which 
are the terms of his dualism, but spirit and objects. Thought is but 
the internal determination of spirit, and as such belongs only to 
spirits. It is the activity of spirit. It is the thinker that is real, 
while the thought is but one of his activities. " What is body ? 
What is organic body? All nothing, all a shadow and without a 
trace of actual being, were not form first given to it through sub- 
stance, through a world of spirits; did we not start from the pure 
simplicity of life. Therefore, every system, even the smallest, . . . 
demands a spirit which shall unite, move, and bind together, — a 
Lord and King of life. And the system of all systems, the all of 
being, is moved and held together — by nothing? — Would it then be 
unified? — If then it is unified, it must be unified through some real 
thing, and nothing has such reality but spirit." 4 This realism, then, 
is not materialistic, but spiritualistic. Spirit is the only principle 
of unity. Yet Jacobi did not undertake to reduce body to spirit in 
any thorough-going way, but at times even seems to give it an inde- 

1 Cf. Wilde, op. cit., p. 46. 

2 II, p.. 244. 

3 Ibid., p. 263. Cf. Wilde, op. cit., p. 47. 

4 II, pp. 273-4. 



JACOBI'S REALISM. 57 

pendent reality. At other times, however, he made it less real than 
spirit; and it was always to him less important. 

It must be borne in mind that Jacobi is not seeking a basis for 
knowledge, but for being. It is not so much knowledge as being 
that needs to be explained, for knowledge is always but an activity 
of the real spiritual being. It is being, existence, that demands 
explanation. Being is to him the one mysterious fact, — the one fact 
he endeavors to understand. Its relation to thought is not the great 
problem, for he always assumes the ultimate identity of the two. 
Ideas exist only in the mind of a living being. " It is the office of 
the senses to receive and transmit impressions. To transmit to 
whom? Where does this accumulation of impressions occur? 
And what would be accomplished with such a mere accumulation? 
Plurality, relation, are living conceptions which presuppose a living 
being that can actively receive the manifold into its own unity." 1 
For him, then, reality does not so much belong to objects as to 
spirits. Hegel gave him credit for having worked free from the 
current conception that the ultimate is ' substance,' to the more ade- 
quate conception that the ultimate is ' spirit.' 2 

Jacobi may be termed a psychological realist; for what he found 
in psychology he took as real and true, and as having not only sub- 
jective but also objective validity. He no more questioned its ob- 
jective validity than he did its subjective. 3 In perception he thought 
we have both the idea and the object. " In the first and simplest 
perception there must be the ' I ' and the ' thou/ inner conscious- 
ness and external object existing together in the soul : both in the 
same indivisible moment, without before or after, without any oper- 
ation of the understanding, nay, even without in the slightest degree 
beginning the production of the concept of cause and effect." 4 In 
the same strain he says : " The decided realist, who upon the evi- 
dence of his senses unhesitatingly accepts external objects, considers 
this certainty as an original conviction, and cannot think otherwise 
than that upon this fundamental experience, all our speculation as 
to an outer world must rest, — how shall such a decided realist name 
the means through which he obtains his certainty of external objects, 
as of existence independent of his own ideas of them ? He has noth- 
ing on which his judgment can rest, except the things themselves, 
—nothing but the fact that objects stand there, actually before him. 

1 II, pp. 271-2. 

2 Werke, Bd. XVII, p. 9. 

3 II, p. 141. 

4 Ibid., p. 176. 



58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

In these circumstances, can he express himself by a more appropri- 
ate term than revelation (Offenbarung) P" 1 

For Jacobi, then, the object was not constituted in any of its de- 
terminations by individual thought, nor is its existence to be proved 
by that thought. Thought only discovers the object, and itself 
must conform to what it finds. He could not understand the ideal- 
istic position, for to him thought is always the thought of the em- 
pirical subject. His view is always psychological, and but seldom 
if ever rises beyond that to the ontological. His thought remained, 
therefore, dualistic, quite as much as realistic. Objects stand over 
against subjects; and though the subject is of the greater impor- 
tance, yet in knowledge it must conform to the object in a way which 
is not required of the object in reference to the subject. He was 
aware, however, that this is but the psychological or epistemological 
aspect of the case ; and there is everywhere in his writings the onto- 
logical assumption that nature is only finite, and that spirit alone is 
infinite. 2 

In a similar way Jacobi treated the Categories of the Understand- 
ing. These he took as not merely determinations of the subject, 
but as first of all determinations of the object. The laws of the 
understanding rest upon nature, and what is not natural cannot be 
thinkable, or what is not in nature cannot be in idea. 3 He did not 
deny that there are a priori elements in knowledge, but only that 
there can be any knowledge purely a priori, i. e. y in the sense of 
being before and independent of all experience. He seems to accept 
the chief Kantian Categories, such as Reality, Substance or Indi- 
viduality, Causality, etc. All these, he says, have objective validity. 4 
An a priori concept, however, is one whose " object as an absolutely 
universal predicate is so given in all single things, that the idea of 
this predicate must be common to all finite things given with reason, 
and must lie at the basis of every experience." 5 

It is evident that Jacobi believed in a knowledge that may prop- 
erly be called a priori, though, as we have seen, not in the Kantian 
sense of being independent of all experience. To Jacobi a priori 
meant that element of knowledge which the mind itself furnishes. 
But this element enters only into concrete experience. " The mate- 
rial of the a priori concepts is given in the immediate perception." 6 

^I, pp. 165-6. 

2 Ibid., pp. 208-9. 

3 Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 128. 

* II, pp. 214-5. Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 163 ff. 

5 Ibid., p. 207. 

6 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 165. Cf. Jacobi, II, pp. 213-215. 



JACOBI'S REALISM. 59 

Again, " the a priori concepts rest, as generally all knowledge, upon 
the Positive, *'. e., upon Faith and Revelation." 1 It would thus ap- 
pear that to Jacobi the a priori elements are quite necessary to knowl- 
edge. But, as we have seen, he made a real advance upon Kant in 
holding that the a priori part of knowledge is an element in knowl- 
edge, and indeed in all knowledge, rather than a part of our knowl- 
edge which is independent of experience. To Jacobi, any knowledge 
whatever depends not only on the universal element, but just as 
much upon the particular. 2 The universal principles are but the 
essential forms of our thought, to which every particular idea or 
judgment must conform in order to be taken into the universal or 
transcendental consciousness. 3 They are not, however, merely sub- 
jective forms to which the objective reality must conform, but are 
themselves also really objective. 4 Thus Jacobi saw what Kant did 
not see, that unless these forms are also objective, external nature 
cannot really be presented under them, and hence can have no mean- 
ing for the subject. Hume had denied the objective validity of 
these principles, and had said that they were merely illusions of 
the subject; Kant had affirmed their subjective validity, and con- 
sidered that, therefore, the understanding could order nature accord- 
ing to them ; but Jacobi saw that in order that there may be a union 
of subject and object in the process of knowledge, these principles 
must be both subjective and objective. 5 

This shows us, then, the nature of Jacobi's realism. The object 
is just as real as the subject in the actual experience of the indi- 
vidual. The object as well as the subject must be the bearer of 
these principles which enter into knowledge. The real is the actual, 
that is, that which has both internal and external existence, that 
which is both thought and being. Every truth is but the reflection 
of the true ; every conception of beauty and goodness, but the reflec- 
tion of the beautiful and the good. And only in intuition can these 
be known. Whatever is given in intuition, then, is true. This 
conception Jacobi had from early life, for he says that always a 
demonstration which did not give an intuition of the actual meant 
but little to him. Therefore, he says, he was blind and insensible. 6 
The real, then, is given in perception rather than in thought or in 
ratiocination. Perception is real because it gives both thought and 

1 II, pp. 213-215. 

*Ibid., pp. 304-5. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 167. 

3 Ibid., pp. 306-7. 

4 Ibid., p. 300; also pp. 215-7. 

5 Kuhn, op. cit., p. 168. 

6 II, p. 178. 



60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

being. 1 Thus there is reached through the sensibility a reality 
which the understanding by means of its faculty of imagination 
cannot reach. Conception cannot give objectivity; this is found only 
in perception, where alone actuality is given. 2 In the same way, 
reason (faith) as a form of perception creates no concepts, builds 
no system, passes no judgments, but, like the external sense, merely 
reveals, and positively makes known. 3 

Jacobi thus endeavored to keep idea and object together from 
the outset. Ideas in consciousness and objective truth are given in 
the same moment. For no sooner is a separation made between the 
two, than an insoluble problem is given to philosophy. Jacobi well 
knew this Achilles's heel of philosophy, and that it left all our knowl- 
edge merely ideas. There, then, began his ' salto mortale.' Either 
our knowledge is mere consciousness, and mere changes of conscious- 
ness, and all our ideas, ' I ' not less than ' not-I,' are mere images 
or projections of our own consciousness, or all our knowledge is, 
in point of existence, a subjectively absolute identity of the real and 
the ideal, and is a certainty of both objective reality and subjective 
being. The first is absurd, and the latter is, therefore, declared to 
be the true conception. He accordingly says that he experiences 
not only that he himself is, but that objects exist outside him, in 
the same indivisible moment. 5 The ' salto mortale ' is seen to be, 
then, the bold leap from the subjectivity of the old systems, or that 
of idealism which finds truth only in ideas, to that form of philoso- 
phy which finds that the truth in fact and the true in reality are 
one and the same thing. It is a leap from the subjectivity of the 
idea to that reality which combines the subjectivity and the objec- 
tivity in the one fact of perception. 

But while Jacobi avoided the error of saying that knowledge con- 
sists in the correspondence of our ideas with the objects (a process 
which it would take another idea to determine, and so on ad infini- 
tum), he did, however, fall into the equally serious error of limiting 
our knowledge to what we can directly perceive. This led him 
into the difficulty of seeming to deny to the understanding even the 
faculty of elaboration which he had already ascribed to it. For if 
all knowledge is in intuition, then all the ideas produced by the un- 
derstanding must be but cobwebs of the brain. Before such a 
criterion of truth all laws and all principles both of science and of 

*II, p. 263. 

2 Ibid., p. 232. 

3 Ibid., p. 58. 

4 Cf. Kuhn, op. cit., p. 62. 

5 II, pp. 174-5- 



JACOBI'S REALISM. 6 1 

philosophy must vanish; and even the categories of the understand- 
ing, which, as we have seen, Jacobi was ready to accept, must be 
taken as fictions. For Hume is not the only one who would say 
that he was never able to perceive cause and effect (causality), or 
any other such relation. But this difficulty Jacobi did not seem to 
recognize fully, for he has not even given it a formal discussion. 

Another argument against the idealists comes to light at this 
point. Jacobi wished to take them also on their own ground; and 
from this standpoint he tried to show the insufficiency of the ideal- 
istic position, and at the same time the inconsistencies of the Kritik 
der reinen Vernunft. He insisted that we must consider every con- 
ception as having a valid origin somewhere — a father as well as a 
mother. As words rest on conceptions, so conceptions rest on per- 
ceptions of either the outer or the inner sense. 1 Materialism and 
Idealism are, therefore, both one-sided. He commended Fichte, and 
seems to have regarded him for a time as the true Messiah of specu- 
lative reason, who showed the two principles, the ' I ' and the ' not-I/ 
which are alternately denied by materialism and by idealism. 2 In 
this connection he says that dualism is the only possible philosophy, 
although from the ontological standpoint he seems to believe that 
materialism must find its final explanation in spiritualism. He 
knew of no kind of idealism but subjective idealism, which he re- 
garded as too highly speculative for a philosophy ; for it involved, 
to his way of thinking, a sinking of all objectivity into the abyss 
of the ego. Accordingly, he criticised the monism of Spinoza, 
in which thought and extension are united in an unknowable and 
unintuitable substance, which can be reached only speculatively, and 
hence can have no philosophical value. 3 

He further argued against the idealists on much the same line as 
Kant in his " Refutation of Idealism," though he showed that this 
line of argument could mean but little from Kant's point of view. 
He understood the true to be something which first gives value to 
knowing and the faculty of knowing. 4 " Perception presupposes 
the perceivable, reason presupposes the true; it is the faculty of the 
presupposition of the true. A reason which does not presuppose 
the true is nothing." 5 He thought there is something in man which 
opposes an absolutely subjective doctrine, a complete idealism; 

1 II, pp. 218-9. 
2 HI, P . 9. 

3 ibid., p. 11. 

4 Ibid., p. 32. 

5 Ibid. 

5 



62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

though some seem to be satisfied (and here he refers especially to 
Kant) if only the name of objects remains., 1 

It is in criticism that Jacobi's real strength appears, and he has 
devoted especial care to an examination of Kant's Kritik. To Kant, 
Space and Time are not consciously in the mind without or before 
all objects; and, therefore, on his own theory they are not mere 
forms of intuition, but are intuitions. 2 Such an a priori view of time 
as Kant supposes is impossible, for it would be empty and immov- 
able, whereas the time we know changes and moves. The time 
which Kant conceives would be like the infinite sea, whose waves, 
however, would belong to some particular time, which would not 
be the a priori time. 3 Again, space is to Kant an idea, and hence 
cannot be conceived as an origin of ideas or concepts. The a priori 
space idea is unthinkable, for it is a space with no objects, no cor- 
poreal nature, but only pure space. That is, in thinking Kant's 
a priori space, mind must think a thought which has no content. 4 
And as space is an idea, bodies in space can be only ideas, and hence 
can have no essential externality, though they may have associated 
with them the further ' idea ' of externality. Nor is the remainder of 
the Kritik any less idealistic. For as reason does not give objects, 
the only objects given to the understanding will be those given by 
sensibility.' 5 Both reason and understanding, therefore, depend upon 
sensibility for their objects. But as space and time are forms of 
sensibility and not of objects, there can be no spatial and temporal 
objects. Even the objects of sensibility, then, are reduced to ghosts, 
— mere appearances of nothing that appears. 6 This leaves but a 
problematical object, and therefore a problematical subject; for the 
subject also will have no ground of existence. 7 The manifoldness 
and unity of which Kant speaks are then only ' substantial forms ' 
of thought and being, and give no genuine reality. 8 

Again, the three a priori unities, space, time, and consciousness, 
are thereby infinite. How, then, can they ever become finite, i. e., 
how can they become particular spaces, times, and consciousnesses ? 9 
These likewise do not lend themselves to an idealistic system, for 
they are three independent concepts, and therefore cannot be re- 
duced to one. Idealism would require all to be merged into con- 



l II, pp. 76-7. 


2 Ibid., 


P- 78. 


3 Ibid., 


pp. 137-8. 


* Ibid., 


P- 153. 


s Ibid., 


p. 107. 


e Ibid., 


pp. IIO-I. 


7 Ibid., 


p. 112. 


8 Ibid., 


p. 113. 


9 Ibid., 


p. II4. 



JACOBI'S REALISM. 63 

sciousness ; but space and time cannot be so reduced. 1 Moreover, 
they are three identities, and do not give objects till the understand- 
ing acts on them, i. e., they require a fourth unity which is not 
forthcoming. 2 Reason also rests on understanding, while under- 
standing rests on imagination, and imagination on sense, and sense 
seems in turn to rest again on imagination. But what does the 
imagination rest on ? It is like the old story of the world resting on 
the elephant, and the elephant resting on the tortoise, and so on. 
So the whole is created by the imagination, which is the true tortoise. 
The difficulty is to get the imagination started. 3 

Jacobi, however, in his desire to correct the subjectivity of Kant's 
theory, made the common mistake of going too far in the other 
direction. Not being satisfied to say that Space and Time must be 
more than mere thought- forms, he insisted that they are forms of 
objects as well as forms of thought. In this way, from the idealism 
of Kant he swung over to an apparent realism. He has thus helped 
us to see that Space and Time must be conceived as reciprocally 
objective and subjective, so far as the individual is concerned. But 
the ontological problem goes deeper, and demands the explanation 
of one sphere in terms of the other, in which case idealism seems 
to be the only line of possibility, though the last word has not been 
spoken, and the final theory is still to be given. 

We can readily see from this that Jacobi's realism is not a crude 
realism, and much less is it a form of materialism. In the last 
analysis he must prove to be rather an idealist, as we now under- 
stand idealism. For he regarded spirit as that by which and for 
which all objects exist, and further maintained that the world 
is rational throughout, though not in the sense of reason as a 
form of understanding. He is, therefore, no more a realist than 
is anyone who does not hold to subjective idealism. 4 He is not 
so much of a realist as Spinoza ; for, as Hegel says, it is Jacobi's 
merit to have seen that the Absolute is not Substance, but Spirit. 5 
Nor is he more of a realist than Kant, for whatever be the logical 
form of the Critical Philosophy, it is evident that Kant did not mean 
to deny reality to objects. But Jacobi did not comprehend Kant's 
philosophical method, and so was forever unable to see anything 
but the letter of Kant's treatment of his problems. He did not allow 

^I, pp. 13.4-5. 

2 Ibid., p. 161. 

3 Ibid., pp. 115, 116, 117. 

* Hegel, Werke, Bd. XVII, p. 9. 

B It is a mistake to regard him, as Professor Wilde apparently does, as a typical 
realist. His work is really a contribution to the development of German Ideal- 
ism ; for idealism better expresses his deepest thought. 



64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

for the mechanical and dogmatic character of Kant's training, and 
hence of his thought and expression. 

As we have already pointed out, Jacobi, in common with his age, 
applied the word ' Idealism ' only to that type of philosophy which 
we now call subjective idealism. To this he was opposed, but not 
more so than was Kant. From our present standpoint, this would 
be nihilism rather than idealism; for not only would it compel a 
denial of all objects outside the thinking self, but this self would, 
moreover, be swept away. Nothing would be left but the psycho- 
logical content of the mind, with no mind of which it was the con- 
tent. This method of reducing matter to mental content would be 
but little better, logically, than the opposite method of reducing mind 
to matter. The one would be a bare idealism, and the other a blank 
materialism. 

A true idealism would rather hold that the universe is an all- 
embracing system of thought-relations, i. e. } relations which may be 
thought to their inmost centre, relations which submit themselves 
to the complete penetration of thought. This means that all the parts 
of the universe are so interrelated that their entire significance is seen 
only in all the parts, i. e\, in their relations to the whole. No part 
is itself only, but each has its being also in every other part. The 
universe is then rational through and through, and its meaning is 
entirely interpretable in terms of thought. All objects and all per- 
sons have their meaning in reference to all other objects and per- 
sons. Everything is active, and must function in reference to all 
other things. The meaning of each will be seen in its function. 
What it does will let us into the secret of what it is, and its functional 
significance will be but another name for its nature. All parts and 
all objects and all persons, then, become ideal, i. e., they have a 
significance for thought, and hence for being. 

It may be said that this was the very doctrine that Jacobi denied. 
This, I think, is a misunderstanding. When he denied that all 
reality could be thought, he had in mind only the limiting finite 
thought of the understanding, which, as he conceived it, was but a 
faculty of inferences and phenomena. And though he said at first 
that the infinite was known only to feeling, he came later to see that 
this really is not different from thought in its highest manifestations, 
and so adopted the word ' reason ' to denote this activity of the self. 
But he was not sufficiently original as a thinker to develop an 
idealism, though probably idealism more fully expresses his deepest 
convictions than any form of realism could do. Not that he can 
properly be called an idealist. His philosophy remains formally a 
realism. But his affinities are rather with spiritualistic idealism than 
with any thorough-going realism. 



CHAPTER V. 

JACOBFS METAPHYSICS: HIS THEISM AND PHILOSOPHY 
OF RELIGION. 

It was in fundamental metaphysical and religious subjects that 
Jacobi found his chief interest. These furnished the motives that 
made him a philosopher at all. Other phases of his doctrine were 
developed merely to enable him to gain a comprehension of these 
matters, and to enable him to set them forth in what he considered 
the true light. It might be said of him as of Spinoza that he was 
a gottgetrunkener Mann. The problems of Theism and of Religion 
he deemed the only subjects of pure metaphysical inquiry. And 
these were the subjects which occupied his chief thought. 

Jacobi saw as clearly as anyone the failure of the old dogmatic 
metaphysics of Theism ; and he made it his life-long endeavor to 
contribute to a more adequate view, to one which would have sig- 
nificance for both philosophy and religion. The old philosophy or 
theology, as Hegel truly says, concerned itself with " the notion of 
God, or God as a possible being, the proofs of his existence, and 
his properties." 1 Its purpose, then, was to find out what predicates 
could be applied to God ; and its result was ° the lifeless product 
of modern Deism." 2 The method of demonstration required the 
statement of some objective ground of the being of God, who would 
then appear to be derived from something else. There is in this 
method no possible passage from the finite to the infinite. God, for 
such a system, becomes either the totality of the finite, which is 
Pantheism, or the essence of subjectivity set over against objec- 
tivity, which is Dualism. On this level it was likewise impossible 
to give any account of the attributes of God; for he was conceived 
as pure reality, as indeterminate being. He was, however, given 
certain properties which were conceived to grow out of his relation 
to the world. These were, therefore, external, and an enumeration 
could be given only db extra. But it will be noticed that this method 
involves the assumption of a starting-point, and the deduction of 
other truths from this. This form of theology, then, started with 
a ' given/ and by deducing God therefrom really made him depend 
upon other terms than himself. This reverses the result aimed at; 

1 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, pp. 71-72. 

2 Ibid., p. 72. 

65 



66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

for instead of making God the ground of all things, it really makes 
him dependent upon all else. 1 

This was the Theism and the Demonstration against which Jacobi 
framed his philosophical doctrines. He felt no less strongly than 
Hegel, though he saw less clearly, that this sort of doctrine was 
inadequate to either philosophy or religion. It had no philosoph- 
ical value, for the reasoning was manifestly unsound ; and it had 
no religious value, for such a conception of God lacked all con- 
tent, and could, accordingly, have no meaning for the heart and 
conscience. Jacobi's criticisms of this sort of philosophy are keen 
and penetrating. His line of argument proceeded by an examina- 
tion of the leading philosophers from Descartes to Schelling, and 
we cannot do better than follow his own method in our exposi- 
tion. From this we may gather together finally his principal 
doctrines. 

Jacobi remarks that Descartes did not follow absolutely the dem- 
onstrative method of reasoning, which is usually thought to be his 
only philosophical method. On the contrary, Descartes started 
from an assumed principle, or intuition ' I think,' and an innate 
(intuitive) idea of God. Upon this he began to build his system. 
Not feeling entirely satisfied with the latter principle, he set about 
also to prove the objective being of God, evidently thinking that in 
reference to the Divine Being mediation was better than immediacy. 
But this appeared to Jacobi to be the weakness of Cartesianism. 
For it made the conception of God depend on other concepts ad 
infinitum. God can be known only immediately, and any attempted 
demonstration must be not only misleading but positively false. 
That essence whose being needs to be proved is not God, and any 
such method of proof is therefore but a form of atheism. Thus, 
proceeding from human knowledge, we make God dependent upon 
the ' I,' which sets itself upon the throne, and makes God dependent 
upon itself. 2 

To Spinozism Jacobi devoted more of his attention, for he con- 
sidered it the greatest foe of Theism. He regarded Spinozism as 
the phoenix which arose out of the ashes of Cartesianism, and which 
became the complete Cartesianism. Descartes had treated the being 
of God as a property which proceeds from thought, i. e., he had 
derived the being from the thought, after he had earlier derived the 
thought from the being. Spinoza, then, drew but the inevitable 
conclusion that thought and being are ultimately one. 3 He did not, 

1 Cf. } loc. cit. et passim. 

2 Kuhn, Jacobi und die Philos. seiner Zeit, pp. 82-3. 

3 Ibid., pp. 88-89. 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 67 

however, attempt to resolve the dualism in finite existence, but left 
mind and matter independent for experience, postulating their 
unity in an ultimate substance, thus getting rid of the absurd idea 
of a chaos. He also abandoned the idea of a development of thought 
and extension from one substance, 1 considering the two as eternally 
distinct, though logically united in the one eternal substance. 

But a natural explanation of the being of finite and successive 
things can as little be given on his theory as on the older. For he 
must posit an eternal time, as infinite finiteness, though he tries to 
say that the absurdity of this is only in the imagination and not in 
the reason. 2 He had, therefore, to choose between a Being and a 
Becoming; and he chose the Being. 3 His universe became static, 
and he so conceived it as to deny not so much God as the world. 4 
He resolved the finite world into God by making the infinite uni- 
verse itself God. As Hegel remarks in the same connection, Spin- 
oza is not so much an atheist as an acosmist. 5 

Though Jacobi regarded this identity of thought and extension 
as invalid because not intuitable, he nevertheless commended Spinoza 
for setting forth, as needing no proof, the double principle that the 
thinking essence can as little be a result or modification of the ex- 
tended essence, as vice versa. Accordingly, the extended essence 
cannot be considered as the stuff to which the thinking essence im- 
parts form, as with Plato to whom the soul is the cause and in gen- 
eral the first. To Spinoza, on the other hand, the extended essence 
is the objective or formal being, the proper real; and the thinking 
essence is only that which in a measure thinks the real being; for 
conceptions are but reflexes of things. Spinozism, therefore, is 
materialistic; for it allows the thinking essence to think only of 
the material, extended essence. 6 Accordingly, Jacobi says, that in 
spite of his professed opposition of thought and extension, Spinoza 
leaves mind merely mechanical, and the universe atheistic. 7 

Spinoza's initial difficulty is in passing from the finite to the in- 
finite. Starting from the standpoint of human knowledge, he can- 
not find his way to the infinite ; or, starting with the infinite, he 
cannot reach the finite. The all-inclusive God and finite individuals 
are contradictory; there is no passage from the one to the other. 

1 Werke, IV, b, p. 133. 

2 Ibid., p. 136. 

3 Ibid., p. 139. 

* IV, a, p. xxxiv. 
5 Wallace, op. cit., p. 106. 
e III, pp. 430-431. 

7 IV, b, p. 134. Cf. John Caird, Spinoza (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), 
pp. 262 ff. 



68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

Having individuals, i. e., admitting human knowledge, there is no 
way by which we can rise to God. 1 But beginning with God, we 
cannot ascribe consciousness to him, in Spinoza's system, any more 
than we can ascribe to him bodily movements and forms and colors. 2 
" The infinite cause has explicitly neither understanding nor will, 
because on account of its transcendental unity and completely abso- 
lute infinity it can have no object of thought and of will." 3 And 
though Spinoza thinks of the first cause as having thoughts but no 
understanding, he must regard these not as particular thoughts, but 
as the ' original stuff ' of thought. 4 Thought or understanding can- 
not be posited of God, for thought is always a certain determinate 
form, a modification of absolute thinking. Moreover, all the vari- 
ous forms of thought are mediate, and, therefore, cannot be referred 
to the infinite nature. 5 Substance, then, as infinite has no under- 
standing, and likewise can have no will. Its relation to the process 
of the world cannot be that of an intelligence to its object, but 
merely that of a mechanical whole to its parts. 

The points to be especially noticed in Jacobi's criticism are that 
he considered Spinozism to be atheism, its universe a mechanism, 
and its geometrical method invalid for philosophy. Faith is the 
only philosophical method, and is in no way a demonstrative prin- 
ciple, but a substitute for demonstration, which latter is applicable 
only to the mechanical sciences of nature. 

Jacobi thought that a purely mechanical universe is not only athe- 
istic, but that it is a self-contradictory conception. For if it be 
absurd to regard anything as absolutely independent, it is likewise 
absurd to regard anything as absolutely dependent. The latter 
would mean that the world was an absolute passivity; and hence 
could account for nothing, as things would have no properties what- 
ever. If complete independence is unthinkable, complete depend- 
ence is equally so. Mechanism, in order to exist at all, must be but 
accidental and not constitutive of things, and must rest finally on 
self-activity. 6 When we think of the world-ground as intelligent 
and self-existing, we have not so difficult a conception, as when we 
try to think of the universe as a self-originating mechanism. 7 This 
latter, to Jacobi, appeared to be an absurdity. 

'IV, b, p. 101. 

2 Ibid., p. 91. 

3 IV, a, p. 105. 

4 Ibid., p. 106. 

5 IV, b, p. 88. 

6 IV, a, p. 25. 

7 IV, b, pp. 147-148. « 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 69 

In order that providence, freedom, and other such human charac- 
teristics may be in the world, Jacobi thought they must exist first 
in the Author of the world. Otherwise we should have blind provi- 
dence, free necessity, etc. 1 The world-ground must therefore be 
intelligent, and hence a personality. For unity of consciousness 
constitutes personality, and every being which in itself exists and 
knows itself as ' I ' is a person. God therefore must be a person ; 
and, as the completest and highest intelligence, he must be the high- 
est personality. Only in this way can we ascribe intelligence to the 
world-ground at all. We cannot think of intelligence apart from 
an intelligent being. The opponents of this view seem to speak of 
the world-ground as intelligence without personality. But, says 
Jacobi, unless intelligence means an intelligent being, it means noth- 
ing whatever. 2 The world-ground must be able to distinguish itself 
from the world of objects, in order that such a world-ground may 
have any meaning for our knowledge, or be in itself anything dif- 
ferent from the world as a whole. " God distinguishes himself 
from all things in the most complete way, and must possess the 
highest personality and the only pure reason." 3 But God does not 
therefore have human faculties. " He, the all-sufficient, needs no 
organs. He is properly complete being in itself, and knowing in 
itself; the pure, highest understanding, the pure, almighty will." 4 

When we come to Kant, we find that Jacobi regarded his theism 
as more nearly adequate, though not entirely satisfactory. He con- 
ceived the negative side of the Kritik der reinen Verniinft to be nec- 
essary from the standpoint of science, in order that we might reach 
an adequate theism in the field of religion. Jacobi therefore thought 
the theoretical part of the Kritik to be directed against a self-deceiv- 
ing rationalism ; and that its great merit was in thus destroying the 
false, and thereby leaving a place for a true rationalism. Kant's 
sound sense led him to see that this would be transformed into an 
abyss unless a God were found to prevent it. 5 Transcendental phi- 
losophy is not, and has no right to be either theistic or atheistic, any 
more than geometry or any other branch of science or mathematics. 
And so Kant's philosophy is neither. 6 j " That it knows nothing of 
God constitutes no reproach to the transcendental philosophy, where 
it is always recognized that God cannot be known but only believed 

^I, p. 114. 
2 IV, b, p. 78. 

3 II, p. 264. 

4 Ibid., p. 10. 

5 Ibid., p. 33. 

6 III, p. 6. 



70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

in. A God who could be known would be no God." 1 This interpre- 
tation of Kant, which regards him as conceiving supersensible truths 
to be undemonstrable, is the view to which Jacobi adhered through- 
out his whole career. 2 

But, on the other hand, neither can the understanding deny the 
objective validity of the Ideas of Reason. These are to it entirely 
foreign. If it were to deny them because they are objects of reason, 
it would also be compelled to deny the objects of sense, for both alike 
are forms of perception. Then there would be nothing left of ob- 
jective theism or of nature, but only a formless content of images 
without objective validity or meaning. 3 Kant, however, goes on to 
show how the theoretical reason depends upon the practical reason, 
and how the practical must be assumed to be true; for this is ren- 
dered necessary in order to account for the facts of the moral expe- 
rience. This acceptance of the practical reason he calls ' rational 
faith.' In this way Kant thought he had superseded both Dog- 
matism and Skepticism by the Critical Philosophy.! In the Kritik 
der reinen Vernitnft, therefore, he subordinates the reason to the 
understanding, making it a mere hand-maid. While in the Kritik 
der praktischen Vernunft, on the other hand, he exalts it to a su- 
premacy above the understanding. 5 Thus Kant's doctrine appears 
different from different points of view. As a philosopher in the 
Pure Reason, he denies the possibility of knowing God, etc. ; while 
as a moral being in the Practical Reason, he has room for a rational 
faith. The ethics undoubtedly represents what he regards as the 
higher and more ultimate point of view. 6 To the pure reason, then, 
these ideas must remain only fictions, having no reality whatever; 
while to the the understanding they do not exist at all. 7 To the pure 
reason they have no constitutive but only regulative function, and, 
therefore, no possible ground in experience. 8 Only in the practical 
reason do they attain to the position of experiences. There they are 
no longer fictions, but are matters of immediate faith and perception. 
In this sphere, as Kant sees, the phenomena of the moral conscious- 
ness cannot exist without the reality of the Ideas of Reason ; and 
reason itself cannot exist if its ideas are but cobwebs of the brain. 9 

1 HI, P- 7- 

2 Ibid., p. 340. 

3 Ibid., pp. 371-2. 
* Ibid., p. 345. 

** 5 Ibid., pp. 364-5- 

6 Ibid., pp. 369-70. 

7 Ibid., pp. 1 01-2. 
s Ibid., p. 105. 

9 Ibid., p. 362. 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 7 1 

Here Kant thinks there is in the human reason, as the law of its 
truth, an immediate knowledge both of nature as the real in general, 
and of its ground which is God. 1 

But neither can the Ideas of Reason be proved ; for proof depends 
upon something outside of that to be proved. It is a process of 
reference, as in geometry, where one thing is proved by reference 
to another. So if we wish a proof of the being of God, it can be 
given only by showing something outside of him, and upon which 
he depends. 2 As this is manifestly impossible, no proof of God is 
possible at all. It is this that Jacobi means when he says that God 
is known not by a conclusion but by an intuition; 3 and that a God 
who could be proved would be no God. 4 

It would be well to recall at this point what we have previously 
said regarding Jacobi's view of demonstration. 5 He never aban- 
doned the conception that demonstration moved in an identity, that 
it was only deduction or induction, and therefore never got beyond 
the field in which it started. That is, he always conceived demon- 
stration to be analytic rather than synthetic. He accordingly never 
saw the significance of Kant's method, and that it was the very 
method he wanted but failed to find. But it is scarcely to be won- 
dered at that he did not fully grasp its meaning, when Kant himself 
did not see its full significance, nor the universality of its possible 
application. 

Jacobi strongly approved Kant's insistence upon the personality 
of God, and commended him for the fact that to him the term 
' God ' meant what it had always meant. 6 In this respect Jacobi con- 
trasted him with the post-Kantians, especially Fichte and Schelling. 
He thought these, — particularly Schelling, against whom he directed 
his last work, Von gottlichen Dingen, — made nature God, and 
thereby robbed God of any personal or even spiritual nature. 

We have now seen Jacobi's view of the problem and the develop- 
ment of modern philosophy. This was to find a place for reality, 
both objective and subjective, — the worlds of sensible and super- 
sensible existence. Descartes had assumed the reality of the sub- 
ject. Spinoza had ended by attributing pure objectivity to extended 
essence. This Malebranche, Leibniz, and Berkeley had tended to 
reduce to mere subjectivity, till a more incisive thinker (Hume) 

l in, p. 363. 

2 Ibid., pp. 367-8. 

3 II, p. 284. 

4 III, p. 7- 

5 Supra , pp. io-ii. 

6 HI, p. 341. 



72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

suggested the same concerning the thinking essence. Thus the 
cogito of Descartes alone remained; the ergo was not expressed; 
and the sum was lost, and with it all reality in general. It was at 
this point that Kant undertook to reconstruct philosophy and to 
restore reality. We have seen that Jacobi regarded the attempted 
restoration of the sensible world as a complete failure; and he was 
not entirely satisfied with Kant's treatment of the supersensible. 
But he was still more in doubt, when he saw the development to 
Fichte and Schelling, though he did not think they represented the 
true Kantianism in regard to the supersensible. He thought that 
Fichte represented the logical result of the subjectivism of Kant, and 
that his denial of God was due to this relationship. However, he 
says that though he should call Fichte's system atheism, yet the 
atheism is, like Spinoza's, purely speculative, and denies the name 
but not the being of God, while the truth is really in their souls. 1 

Jacobi's criticisms of the philosophy of Schelling will demand a 
fuller treatment, for the questions there raised are more fundamental 
to his metaphysics. They concern the question of the possibility of a 
natural explanation of the universe and of man. In his opposition 
to Schelling, then, it will be possible to find Jacobi's own views of 
man, the world, and God. 

The philosophy of Schelling appeared to Jacobi to deny the per- 
sonality of God, and, in fact, to make nature God. This results 
in a kind of Naturalism which necessarily denies not only God, but 
all things spiritual. It will not help the matter to call the original 
Reason, and regard it as blind, and then call it the Absolute, and 
identify it with necessity ; for this would only show reason to be irra- 
tional. 2 This philosophy denies all the characteristics of reason, and 
yet wants to have its principle called rational. But a power above 
which there is no other, and in which knowledge, wisdom, and good- 
ness do not prevail, is blind fate; and it does not make it mean 
anything to call it Absolute Reason. Reason is only where there is 
providence ; and where that is lacking, reason is lacking.' 3 

If one begins, as Schelling does, with an unconscious principle, 
Jacobi maintains it is impossible to see how consciousness could ever 
be developed in the process of an unconscious world. That which is 
now must have been in the beginning, and the original power of the 
universe must have contained in itself all that which now exists. 
"He that hath made the eye, shall he not see?" 4 The thought of 

1 in, pp. 46-47. 

2 n, p. 49. 

3 Ibid., p. 51. 

4 Ibid., p. 94. 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 73 

such a blind universe gradually developing itself from all eternity, 
and at last producing mind, is to Jacobi completely absurd. 1 If 
providence and freedom did not exist in the beginning, then they do 
not exist now ; and the God of Socrates and Plato, and of Christ, is 
but a fairy tale. 2 " If reason can exist only in a person, and the 
world must have a rational author, mover, and ruler,- then must this 
essence be a personal essence. Such an essence we can conceive 
only under the form of human rationality and personality, and the 
characteristics which I recognize in man as the highest, viz., Love, 
Self-Consciousness, Understanding, Free-Will, I must attribute to 
him. . . . This decisive assertion Feeling makes for the religious 
faith." Again, " As this consciousness is the same as the conviction 
that intelligence is the only self-activity, that it is the highest, yea, 
the only power truly known by us, so it teaches faith in a first all- 
highest intelligence, in a rational author and law-giver of nature, 
in a single God who is spirit. 4 

But finite reason cannot develop from irrational nature. Either 
reason is of nature and is only the complete development of sensi- 
bility, or it is of God and is spirit. 5 Jacobi held that reason is spirit, 
and is entirely different from sensibility, which may be a power of 
nature. He says Aristotle has made it clear that there are only 
two kinds of philosophers, those who conceive that the more com- 
plete proceeds from the less complete, and those who conceive the 
most complete to be first. 6 The one makes it necessary to think 
that a purposeless mechanism produces goodness, beauty, and truth ; 
while the other finds these in God, and the universe becomes their 
embodiment. Shall we then say that the universe arose from self- 
independent mechanism without cause or end ; or does it pursue the 
good and beautiful, — is it the work of providence, the creation of 
God? The latter alone is theism, and was the natural faith of the 
world before philosophical science arose. Naturalism arose only 
with speculation. 

It may be answered that nature is not taken as the mere content 
of all being, but as that which brings forth, — the absolute produc- 
tivity itself, the subjectless and objectless productivity with is un- 
conditioned either from the front or rear (before or after, a parte 
ante, a parte post) ; that it is not in any way the things produced — 

*II, p. 118. 

2 Ibid., p. 123. 

3 IV, a, pp. xlv-xlvi. 
*Ibid., a, pp. 32-33- 

5 HI, p. 378. 

6 Ibid., p. 382. 



74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

the infinity of single essence — or the content of all being; but 
merely the properly eternal and unchangeable being, the being of 
the absolute productivity. This holy, eternal, creating, power of 
the world which produces all things from itself, and efficaciously 
brings forth, — this is the only true and living God. The God of 
theism, on the contrary, is only an insipid idol, a cobweb of the brain, 
dishonoring to the reason. 

In reply Jacobi asks concerning the works of this God : Are not 
these changes merely one and the same with himself, or only present 
in him; or are they also outside of him? If they are only in him, 
then are they mere changes, modifications of himself; and there is, 
in truth, nothing created except time. Thus, when we identify God 
with nature or the universe, we say that God is eternally the same 
in quality and quantity. It would, therefore, be impossible that 
there should be any change, unless he himself were the change- 
ability, the temporalness, the reciprocity itself. It may, indeed, be 
urged that this changeableness is in its root an unchangeable, — the 
holy, eternal, creating power of the world, only in its fruit explic- 
itly changeable, so that at any moment the all of the essence does 
not exist. Accordingly, it would be undeniable that the creative 
word which the naturalistic God expresses from eternity becomes 
nothing. He calls forth non-being out of being, as the God of theism 
calls forth being out of non-being. 1 

" And so we are compelled to conclude, without going further, 
that the manifest nothing is that which alone is true, or to admit 
the view as unacceptable that nature is all and that there is nothing 
outside of and above it. For so much is clear to every unprejudiced 
person, that if nature is nothing other than the holy, eternal, 
creating, original, power of the world, which produces and brings 
forth actively all things from itself, then the world, with all that 
it is at any moment of its actual explicit being, is nothing; that 
then the cause which brings forth the world that from eternity to 
eternity passes over from one form to another form of nothing, 
must itself be nothing in the same measure, as its effect is nothing. 
The entire essence of this cause is, indeed, nothing other than its 
effect; and it completes in every moment all that it is able to com- 
plete, — its to-day is not more complete than its yesterday, and its 
to-morrow is not more complete than its to-day. It, therefore, in 
truth brings forth nothing, but makes only an eternal change in 
itself, that is, as we have already seen, it gives birth eternally to 
time. To create this in an incessant reciprocity, this is all its life, 
and the entire content of its life. Only thereby does it live and do 
1 III, pp. 390-392. 



JACOBFS METAPHYSICS. 75 

all things which it does ; it has no higher aim, no content of life." 1 

All this seems to mean that it is Jacobi's opinion that the natural- 
ists' world cannot be a developing world, inasmuch as it really cannot 
produce anything above the dead-level of mechanical movement. 
This would not be a true development, but only an eternal change, 
with no more in the effect than in the cause. Naturalism, therefore, 
cannot account for anything above mechanism, cannot speak of 
God, of divine things, of freedom, of moral good or evil, or of 
proper morality ; for these would demand a true development rather 
than a mere change. 

Even less could there be said to arise any consciousness which 
could in any way be called absolute ; nor could such a beginning even 
give rise to a finite consciousness. It would, indeed, be nothing but 
a form of materialism; for since it starts with only mechanical na- 
ture, it is obliged to explain all things in terms of mechanism. And 
as Jacobi has shown, knowledge and morality both imply principles 
which are not natural (mechanical), which cannot be given a nat- 
uralistic origin, and whose operations cannot be explained as 
naturalistic processes. Nature is non-rational as knowledge is non- 
natural. This shows a faculty in man which is above nature, and 
different from nature 2 

" To this result have we attained, since we presuppose the con- 
cept of nature as an independent (self-dependent) essence which has 
nothing outside it as its cause, and nothing outside it as its effect, 
but which fully determines itself as both cause and effect, world 
and world-creator, the complete union of both. We found, as the 
basis of this, the monstrous thoughts of the identity (an idem esse) 
of being and non-being ; which identity, however, should be — not 
the identity of the manifestly nothing, but the identity of the uncon- 
ditioned and the conditioned, of necessity and freedom ; in fact, the 
identity — of reason and unreason, of good and evil, of things and 
nothings." 3 

But the human reason rests on diversity in these conceptions, and 
demands the opposition and indestructible dualism of the super- 
natural and nature, of freedom and necessity, of foresight and blind 
accident or chance. 4 Jacobi noticing this practical dualism, and the 
Trieb which he finds in man, maintains this dualism firmly, though 
he says that nature is that finite which stands in connection with 
God the infinite. He thus evidently tries to avoid an ultimate 

1 III, pp. 392-3- 

2 Ibid., p. 397. 

3 Ibid., pp. 393-4- 
A Ibid., p. 394. 



76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

dualism, though he sees no way to avoid a practical one. He says 
man's body is one with the mechanism of nature, but that his spirit 
came directly from God. 1 And just as man knows himself to be 
above nature, so he knows that above him is an all-highest essence, 
God. 2 

It is plain to Jacobi that such a universe as naturalism demands, 
without beginning and end, would be but a ' negative infinite.' It 
cannot be grounded in itself, nor explained out of itself. 3 " But just 
as impossible is it to prove the contrary, viz., that nature is a work 
and is not God, that it is not creator and creation at the same time, 
not indeed the only essence. The conclusion which is drawn that 
nature cannot be dependent on a cause outside itself that brought, 
it forth and must have begun it, was, is, and remains a conclusion 
which is false and without philosophical justification. 

" By the manifold attempts which have been made philosophically 
to overcome this or that impossibility, the two opposite parties, the 
naturalists and the theists, have always referred in one way or other 
to the same fundamental principle, viz., that of the unconditioned, 
and always with the same reason or unreason." " That all becoming 
necessarily presupposes a being or a moving being which has not 
become ; that all change, and therewith all time order, presupposes 
an unchanging eternal; that all conditions presuppose an uncon- 
ditioned absolute; this truth, as an immediate presupposition of 
reason, or as a positive self-revelation has been recognized by all 
philosophers. They separate only on the question whether this 
Absolute is a ground or a cause. That it is a ground and not a 
cause is the opinion of the naturalists; that it is a cause and not 
a ground, that of the theists." 4 

This brings Jacobi to a discussion of the principles of ground 
and cause. A clear distinction between these he regarded as funda- 
mental to a grasp of the truth. As we have just seen, he regarded 
it as the mistake of all the naturalists from Spinoza to Schelling 
that they have substituted the principle of ground for that of cause. 
The main distinction between the two is that the former excludes 
while the latter includes the idea of time. The former, therefore, 
if it were the principle of the universe, would render the universe 
static, as in Spinozism ; while the latter alone would permit a devel- 
opment — a moving universe. 

Disregard of this, that we never understand the term ' ground ' 

1 III, p. 399. Cf. also p. 458. 

2 Ibid., p. 401. 

3 Ibid., pp. 402-3. 

4 Ibid., pp. 403-4. 



JACOBFS METAPHYSICS. 77 

as anything other than the content, the all-ness of the determinations 
of an object, has caused endless confusion in philosophy. 1 There 
can be no time element between whole and parts, or ground and 
consequents, for the whole cannot be present before the parts, nor 
the parts after or without the whole. " With the entrance of time 
the concept of ground changes to that of cause and effect. As, 
however, the effect proceeds out of the cause, and both are in a 
necessary way joined together, we know only that, if we abstract 
the idea of continuous time, the cause changes into ground (sub- 
ject), the effect into mere consequent (predicate), and both (cause 
and effect) pass into one another. Thus we explain the single and 
entire results of a man out of his permanent disposition, his unchang- 
ing character. Where we cannot proceed in this manner, and in our 
consideration get rid of time, there we attain to no insight, but 
acquire through experience, like the beasts, mere expectation of 
similar cases." 2 

Ground appeared to Jacobi to be the highest concept of the under- 
standing, while the highest concept of the reason is cause. 3 Ground 
is but the principle of composition, while cause alone is the prin- 
ciple of generation. 4 Ground, then, as the principle which is used 
by the naturalists, has been seen to be insufficient; for it excludes 
time, and hence all development, or even change. A universe so 
regarded would necessarily be static. Cause is the principle of the 
theists, and points to an Absolute who is the cause of all things that 
appear, a God who is Creator and Lord. 

Ancients and moderns, then, admitting nature and its changes, 
ask, Whence came Nature? The Naturalists reply by saying that 
it is a foolish question, and that they may as well ask of the theists, 
Whence came God ? We may say that " the being of the universe 
appears to us necessarily as a miracle, as an impossibility, because 
the human understanding conceives as possible only what becomes, 
what can or could arise. The universe, however, is something 
which is necessarily eternal as the Creator. This last, that God has 
necessarily created from eternity, is not denied by even the deep- 
thinking theists. So the question vexes them not less than the nat- 
uralists: How the finite can proceed from the infinite, the many 
from the one, the changeable temporal, from the unchangeable eternal ; 

x m, P . 451. 

2 Ibid., p. 452. 

3 This shows, as we have all along contended, that to Jacobi ' reason ' became 
more and more a form of thought rather than of feeling. 

4 III, pp. 453-4. Cf. also, IV, b, pp. 145-6; and II, pp. 184 ff. Cf. Piinjer, op. 
cit., p. 625 ; also Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 9-10. 

6 



78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

how such a process can go on incessantly. One may choose either 
of the two : assume with the naturalists that the unconditioned 
or Absolute which reason presupposes is only the substrate of the 
conditioned, the one of the all; or with the theists that the uncon- 
ditioned or the Absolute is a self-conscious, free cause, analogous 
to rational will, an all-highest intelligence working according to 
ends. It remains, however, equally impossible in the one choice as 
in the other to explain the being of the universe as an origin out of 
such a First." 1 

We thus see that Jacobi regarded time as a factor in the divine 
consciousness, though he also says that in another way the Absolute 
is above time. The universe has not a temporal but a logical de- 
pendence upon him, he having created it from all eternity. A being 
to whom time is an object must in some sense be above time, though 
in another sense time enters into the very centre of his conscious- 
ness. That is, ontologically, time is his object; while, psycholog- 
ically, he is subject to the concept of time. This is undoubtedly 
true of the individual consciousness, and probably is true in some 
way of the absolute consciousness, though, not having the same nat- 
ural cycles as man, the absolute consciousness will not in the same 
sense be subject to time. 

Jacobi regarded the object-subjectivity, or the absolute identity 
of being and consciousness, which was a phase of Schelling's nat- 
uralism, as of a piece with Spinoza's identification of the thinking 
and the extended substance. 2 To Spinoza the identification is neces- 
sarily unknown, and so is of no value to man in practical affairs. 
To Schelling it is equally unknown, and, as far as the individual is 
concerned, it becomes nothing. But Jacobi looks favorably on Pla- 
to's doctrine, and in fact regards his own as one with it. The unity 
behind the multiplicity becomes, in his philosophy, a real being. 
The forms and individual things of the world are possible only 
because of the earlier existence of the ideas; and the multiplicity of 
the world is possible only because of the earlier One which produces 
it, and which is itself not multiple but truly one. 3 Thus the multi- 
plicity does not produce the unity, but the unity produces the mul- 
tiplicity. The existence of ' things ' requires a self-existent being 
who is God, a One who is the source of the multiplicity, and in whom 
it has meaning. " This Platonic doctrine is not further from mate- 
rialism than it is from idealism. It considers the actuality of the 
sense world, its objectivity; considers the actuality of the highest 

1 III, pp. 409-410. 

2 Ibid., p. 429. 

8 Ibid., pp. 455-6. 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 79 

cause ; the truth of the ideas of the good and beautiful ; distinguishes 
the supernatural from the natural, the created from the uncreated; 
the world from its creator ; that is, it is decidedly dualistic and 
theistic." 1 

We have now reached the conclusion of our review of Jacobi's 
direct criticism of modern philosophers from Descartes to Schelling. 
It will be evident at once that Jacobi's interpretation of these sys- 
tems is sometimes inadequate. Especially is this true in the case 
of Spinoza and Kant. It is becoming increasingly evident that the 
deepest meaning of Spinoza is in reality an idealism, and not a ma- 
terialism, as Jacobi thinks. In the case of Kant, Jacobi adopted the 
conception of the a priori element that was common in his day and 
for some time afterwards. But it is more correct to regard Kant's 
a priori not as something known before experience, but as the 
element the mind contributes to experience. Similarly, it might be 
said for Schelling that his Absolute is not so completely one with 
the world-process as Jacobi understands. But inasmuch as Jacobi's 
own views come out chiefly in criticism, it seemed best to devote 
some time to an examination of his criticisms. From this point, 
then, we shall try to gather up the main features of his own views, 
in a more or less systematic form. 

Jacobi firmly believed in a personal God, and, accordingly, 
strongly approved Kant's insistence upon the personality of the 
Divine. 2 And, reverting to Schelling, he added that those who deify 
nature deny God. The personality of man indicates the personality 
of God. " Without a divine Thou there is no human I, and without 
a human I no divine Thou." 3 He conceived personality to consist 
in will and freedom and intelligence ; and that therefore, if we con- 
ceive the cause of the world as an intelligence or as a ruler, we must 
conceive him as a person. 4 He readily accepted the anthropo- 
morphism of Christian theism, regarding it not as a defect but as 
the necessary opposite of pantheism or cosmotheism. 5 It is what 
has always been known as theism. 6 But God is not therefore cor- 
poreal ; yet he knows, loves, wills. 7 There is no other kind of God, 
— no other use of the word is valid. " God is only God, if knowl- 
edge and goodness prevail in all his acts, if he possess a fore-seeing 

Ull, p. 4 6o. 

2 IV, a, p. xxiv. 
s Ibid., p. xlii. 
* Ibid., p. xlv. 

5 Ibid., p. xlviii. 

6 Zirngiebl, Jacobi's Leben, Dichten und Denken, p. 268. 

7 III, pp. 422-3. 



80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

power and might, so that a purpose lies at the basis of all his acts." 1 
That there must be such a God is evident from what man finds 
in himself. For, granting man's intelligence, we must allow him 
to have freedom and power, or else his intelligence plays only the 
role of spectator. 2 And just as man finds in himself a power which 
is above mere nature, so he has along with this the consciousness 
of an essence above him, which is not merely the all-highest, but 
which is God. This God is not a blind, all-powerful force, but the 
world-soul, who has will, knowledge, freedom, and love 3 Nor is it 
enough to think of God as an idea in which centres certain concep- 
tions ; but he must indeed be a person in order to account for the fact 
of worship. Otherwise, worship would not be intelligible, 4 for if 
man does not accept the true objective person of God, then he makes 
himself to be God, 5 and his worship of God is but the worship of 
himself. If, then, there is no personal God, there can be no true 
religion, no adoration, no worship. Jacobi says he would even pre- 
fer the view that makes God an idol to that which worships only 
one's self; for the former denies God only with the lips. 6 Atheism 
would destroy all reverence, and so would disenchant the universe; 7 
for reverence cannot exist except for spirit, — never for a mere 
mechanism. 8 

Moreover, Jacobi thought that the highest aspirations of man 
indicate the objective being of these ideals, and this implies the ob- 
jective being of God. 9 Goodness, beauty, and truth, all need to 
have objective being to be real. "But the good — what is it? I 
have no answer if there be no God." 10 The problem of the existence 
of God, then, resolves itself for Jacobi into the problem of the objec- 
tivity of the good, the beautiful, and the true; 11 and the true objec- 
tivity of these he never doubts. 

It is at once apparent that Jacobi regarded the relation of theism 
and religion to morality as very close. Faith must precede virtue, 
for faith is the foundation of virtue. With the disappearance of 
faith in God, virtue would vanish. 12 Religion and morality are re- 

1 Zirngiebl, op. cit., p. 252; cf. Jacobi, II, pp. 49-51. 

2 IV, a, p. 59. 

3 III, pp. 273-4. 

4 Ibid., p. 302. 

5 Ibid., p. 49. 
5 Ibid., p. 50. 

7 II, p. 52. 

8 Ibid., p. 321. 

9 HI, p. 33. 

10 IV, a, p. xlii. 

n Ibid. 

12 Ibid., pp. xlvi-xlvii. 



JACOBI'S METAPHYSICS. 8 1 

ciprocal, and both depend on the being of spirit. Through moral 
improvement we are raised to a worthy conception of the highest 
essence. 1 Reverence for divine things lies at the foundation of all 
virtue, and of all sense of honor. 2 

Concerning religion he says : " The spirit of my religion is there- 
fore this : man exists through a divine life in God ; and there is a 
peace of God which is higher than all reason; in him dwells the 
participation and the contemplation of an incomprehensible love." 3 
There is thus in man a consciousness of a higher and of an enclosing 
being, and unless there be a God of whom man is a spark, then 
man's being deceives him, and the remainder of his being is a lie. 4 
This boundlessness of the human spirit which conceives the good 
and the beautiful to be outside itself must be in God, if nature is 
from him and not he from nature. 5 

Religion, then, is conceived by Jacobi to consist in an immediate 
consciousness of God, who is thought of as a great enclosing spirit 
from whom we proceed. This spirit we can know directly. God 
must himself be born in man, if man is to have a living God, and 
not merely an idol. Then man is able to feel God the same as he 
feels and imagines himself. 6 In this way one has more than the 
idea of God, he has the actuality, the truth. 7 The relation of God 
to the individual is an immediate revelation, and the content of the 
revelation is an immediate truth for the individual. 8 This imme- 
diate experience is the only origin of truth, either sensible or super- 
sensible. The former is called knowledge, the latter faith. 9 

Theism is to Jacobi first practical, a matter of immediate experi- 
ence, and only incidentally speculative. 10 Some writers have charged 
him with inconsistency for attempting to give any exposition of his 
theism, and say that all he could properly do would be merely to 
affirm the existence of God for his faith. 11 This criticism would be 
valid only if we should regard his ' faith ' as entirely a feeling con- 
tent. But, as we have seen, it is not merely such, for it tends more 
and more throughout his writings to become a thought content. An 

1 ill, pp. 275 ff. 
2 IV, a, p. 33. 

3 Ibid., pp. 212-213. 

4 II, p. 44. 

5 Ibid., p. 45. 

6 III, pp. 277-279. 

7 Ibid., p. 284. 

8 Zirngiebl, op. cit., pp. 10-11. 

9 Drews, Die deutsche Spekulation seit Kant, Bd. II, pp. 5-6. 
10 IV, a, p. xxxix. 

u Pfleiderer, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 230-231. 



82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOBI. 

immediacy of thought, then, admits of exposition, and indeed calls 
for it. What Jacobi does say is that God is not revealed to the 
understanding, but to the reason, and this immediately by a sort of 
inspiration. Without such an inspiration, there would be no rever- 
ence, no beauty, no virtue, no stars in the night of our being. 1 Na- 
ture generally, as in our breasts, partly announces and partly con- 
ceals God. It is only the highest essence in man that points to an 
all-highest outside of him. The spirit in him alone speaks of God. 
It is as such that we think of ourselves as coming from spirit. 
Otherwise we would have to suppose the living as coming from the 
non-living, and light from darkness. 2 

It was the view of Jacobi that nature conceals rather than reveals 
God ; for nature is but a concatenation of causes and effects, without 
beginning or end, without either foresight or chance. It works 
without will, and without deliberation either for the good or the 
beautiful. Man alone reveals God, since he with his spirit lifts him- 
self above nature. And as Christianity has set forth a personal God 
who reveals himself to man, it is therefore the only true religion. 
All else is atheism and idolatry. 3 But his mysticism regards the 
being of God as incomprehensible; and he says it is the part of 
wisdom to admit this limitation of human thought. 4 

This revelation of God in the soul constitutes the basis of Jacobi's 
ethical doctrines. This knowledge of God is but a dim light which 
is meant to entice us on to fuller and more perfect knowledge. It 
constitutes desire ; and the fulfilment of this divine desire is the ful- 
filment of the highest good. This, too, manifests God's purpose in 
the world. It is to create a world that he might show his love. 
Creation is only that God might will the beautiful and the good in 
order to love it. 5 The purpose, then, toward man is to develop him 
to that point at which there can be a mutual love between God and 
man, where man will know God and imitate him, and where, accord- 
ingly, there will be love and consequent joy for both. 

The spiritual faculty, or reason, then, constitutes in man the orig- 
inal desire and Trieb. Reason is a stirring, a developing faculty, 
and is above the mere natural, and masters it. 6 We must have, in 
some measure, the revelation of reason in order that it may constitute 
a Trieb; for what is not in any way known to us, we never can seek. 7 
i III, pp. 293-4. 

2 Ibid., p. 325. 

3 Ibid., pp. 425-6. 
4 IV, a, p. 71. 

5 III, p. 274. 

6 Ibid., p. 273. 

7 Ibid., p. 276. 



JACOBFS METAPHYSICS. 83 

And what this Grundtricb of human nature, as an object of knowl- 
edge or will, strives after, men have always called Divine Things. 1 
This determination or power man has by himself, by virtue of his 
spiritual nature. This enables him to raise himself above the ani- 
mal part of himself by wisdom, goodness, and power of will. From 
this proceeds all virtue, which is an end in itself, and does not depend 
on the conception of duty, nor on the desire of happiness, but springs 
up originally. 2 

Man, then, as a conscious, active essence, is conditioned by a 
double external, — a nature beneath him and a God above him. 3 The 
former he must overcome and subordinate to the latter ; and this can 
be done only because he participates in a very real way in the es- 
sence of the divine. This furnishes his desire, and gives rise to 
his search, his effort. The need, however, does not reveal what 
satisfies it; this is seen only in experience. The experience itself, 
nevertheless, is possible only through a divine prophesying soul, 
endowed with an original foresight. 4 But the activity of man, the 
original Trieb, is an expression of God, and this we call the will. 
The relations in which it finds itself (together with the like relations 
of things) are the laws of nature. The direction toward the finite 
is the sensible endeavor, or the principle of desire; while the direc- 
tion toward the eternal is the intellectual endeavor, or the principle 
of love. 5 

As the moral Trieb is the truly proper human energy, 6 it involves 
the freedom of man, or an ability to rise to the attainment of the 
objects of his love (or spiritual desire), or to express that which 
is one's inmost being. 7 A conflict of desires raises the conception 
of right and wrong; for all cannot be gratified in the same measure. 8 
This sort of freedom, or " the independency of the inner power of 
the will, or the possible sovereignty of the intellectual essence over 
the sensible essence, is de facto conceded by all men." 9 This shows 
that Jacobi holds the supremacy of man over nature to be in re- 
spect to his moral power, his moral freedom, his will, " which is a 
spark out of the Eternal Light, and a power out of the Almighty." 10 

'in, p. 317. 

2 Ibid., pp. 318-319. 



z Ibid., p. 274. 




4 Ibid., p. 440. 




5 IV, a, p. 34. 




6 V, p. 217. 




7 Piinjer, op. cit.. 


, pp. 645-6. 


8 IV, a, p. 21. 




* Ibid., p. 28. 




™Ibid., p. 248. 





84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

Concerning Immortality, the third of the purely metaphysical 
topics, Jacobi did not say much directly. He maintained that the 
immediate intuition of immortality was given in the same manner 
as that of God and Freedom. He appeared to regard immortality 
as being involved in theism and in freedom. Having, as he thought, 
established the latter, he seemed to think the subject of immortality 
needed no special exposition. He took it, as Kant had done, as the 
necessary corollary of the religious and moral life. 



CONCLUSION. 

It is at once evident that Jacobi's thought was not very systematic, 
nor his doctrines well formulated. There is an indefiniteness in his 
writings such as one is not surprised to find in a writer who has close 
affiliations with mysticism. Hence it is to his general attitude and 
point of view, rather than to any definitely elaborated contributions 
to philosophy, that we can point in our concluding remarks. Some 
historians, indeed, have said that his importance is to be found en- 
tirely in his penetrating criticisms of earlier philosophers. But 
Jacobi is not without constructive importance, and his point of view 
has had considerable influence upon subsequent thinkers. 

The empirical point of view which characterized all Jacobi's think- 
ing, has become the point of view of all philosophy since his day. 
He insisted that philosophy is an interpretation of life as it is, and 
that what we have to explain is experience, all of which is the ex- 
perience of the individual. In this experience, he says, we come 
into actual contact with both sensible and supersensible facts. In 
opposition to the sensationalists, he maintained that we know directly 
the facts of the world of sense. This is in accordance with the 
modern theory that judgment relates immediately to reality. And in 
opposition to the rationalists, he says that we know the supersensible, 
not by an inference, but by direct experience. This is his doctrine 
of immediacy. 

But, in accordance with that mysticism which he acquired early in 
life, he at first regarded this experience as a feeling rather than 
as a thought content. Certain writers have considered this his final 
position. But there is evidence to show that he gradually came to 
see that this was a thought content. His substitution of the term 
' reason ' for ' feeling ' seems to show this conclusively. And it is 
borne out by the fact that toward the close of his life he was able 
to give his thought a more systematic formulation, as is seen in his 
General Introduction, which was one of the last of his writings. 

His view of mind as active, and of life and consciousness as one, 
lead to the conception that man is essentially spiritual, and the uni- 
verse the expression of an infinite spirit. He believes man to be 
the forth-putting of an Infinite Person whose purposes are being 
fulfilled, in the world as a whole, but especially in man who alone can 
comprehend both himself and the eternal. He believed that natural- 

85 



86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

ism, such as Schelling's, involves the contradictory conception of a 
moving, developing universe that does not proceed from thought, 
and that is not working out the purposes of thought. Such a de- 
veloping universe can only be the expression of a spiritual being who 
must be regarded as a person. But Jacobi's view suffers somewhat 
in approximating a transcendent rather than an immanent theism. 

It has been said that Jacobi is a realist, and his philosophy has been 
characterized as the origin of German realism. But he is at any 
rate not a materialistic realist; for, as we have just seen, he is a 
strict theist, believing also that man's nature is essentially spiritual. 
His language, moreover, is usually the language of realism, but 
we find it easier to interpret his thought as a groping and imper- 
fect idealism. We have seen reason to regard him as having closer 
affiliations with the idealists than with the realists, for his thought 
is, that spirit is the final term of the universe, and that all things 
have their being only in an Absolute who is spirit, and not substance. 
It is this conception, then, that leads us to call him an imperfect 
idealist, and his philosophy one of the springs of German Idealism. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 87 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
Philosophical Works of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. 

Allwills Brief sammlung, 1774. 

Woldcmar, 1779. 

Brief e uber die Lehre Spinozas, 1785. 

David Hume uber den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus, 1785. 

Briefe uber die Lehre Spinozas (Zweite Auilage mit Beylage), 1789. 

Ueber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus die Vernunft zu Verstande zu 
bringen, 1801. 

Von den Gottlichcn Dingen, 181 1. 

Werke, Bde. I-VI, 1812-1825. The first three volumes were edited by Jacobi. 
After his death in 1816, the remaining volumes were edited by Friedrich 
Koppen. 

Works Concerning Jacobi. 

Adamson, R. Article "Jacobi" in Encyclopedia Britannica. (Ninth edi- 
tion.) 

Kuhn, J. Jacobi und die Philosophic seiner Zeit. 1834. 

Levy-Bruhl, L. La philosophic de Jacobi. 1894. 

Wilde, N. F. H. Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism. 1894. 

Zirngiebl. Jacobi s Leben, Dichten und Denken. 1867. 

Compare Also the Following General Works. 

Drews. Die deutche Spekulation seit Kant. 2d ed. 1895. 

Falckenberg, R. History of Philosophy. Eng. trans, by Armstrong. 1893. 

Fischer, Kuno. Geschichte der neuren Philosophic. Bande I-. 3d ed. 1878- ? 

Harms. Die Philosophic seit Kant. 1876. 

Hedge, F. H. Hours with German Classics. 1886. 

Hedge, F. H. Martin Luther. 1888. 

Hedge, F. H. Prose Writers of Germany. 2d ed. 1870. 

Hoffding, Harald. History of Philosophy. Eng. trans, by Meyer. 1900. 

Pfleiderer, Otto. Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History. Eng. 
trans, by Stewart and Menzies. 1886-8. 

Pfleiderer, Otto. Philosophy and Development of Religion. (Gifford Lec- 
tures.) 1894. 

Piinjer. History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion. Eng. trans, by 
Flint. 1887. 

Royce, J. The Spirit of Modem Philosophy. 1892. 

Schwegler. History of Philosophy. Eng. trans, by Stirling. 

Windelband, W. History of Philosophy. Eng. trans, by Tufts. 1893. 

Windelband, W. Geschichte der neueren Philosophic 1878. 

Zeller, E. Geschichte der deutchen Philosophic 2d ed. 1875. 

The Following Works Have Also Been Referred to in this Monograph. 

Bosanquet, B. Logic. 1888. 

Caird, John. Spinoza. [Blackwood's Philosophical Classics.] 1888. 

Fraser, A. C. Selections from Berkeley. 3d ed. 1883. 

Green, T. H. Prolegomena to Ethics. 3d ed. 1890. 

Hegel, G. W. F. Werke. Bande I-XVIII. 1832-1845. 

Hume, David. Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. (Selby-Bigge.) 



88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. H. JACOB! 

Hume, David. Treatise of Human Nature. (Selby-Bigge.) 

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. 

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. 

Locke, John. Essay concerning Human Understanding. 

Major, D. R. The Principal of Teleology in the Critical Philosophy of Kant. 

1897. 
Paulsen, F. Immanuel Kant. Eng. trans, by Creighton and Lefevre. 1902. 
Sime. Lessing. 2d ed. 1879-1890. 
Spinoza. Ethics. Eng. trans, by Elwes. 1884. 
Wallace, W. The Logic of Hegel. 1892. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, The, 75, 77 f. 

Allwill, The Correspondence of, 3, 1 6, 35, 

36. 
Analytical method, 31. 
A priori, 20, 21, 37, 58 f., 79. 
Aristotle, 73. 

Aufkldrung, I, 9 f., 13, 24, 29, 36, 44. 
Becoming and Being, 76. 
Being, Individuality, the only, 55. 
'Belief,' 4, 37. 

BOEHME, I, 6. 

Bonnet, 2, 8, 23. 
Cabanis, 41 n. 
Categories, 12, 58. 
Cause, and ground, 76. 

points to an absolute, 77. 
Certainty, only in intuition, 38. 
Christ, 73. 
Consciousness, 21, 75. 
Deduction, in philosophy, 65. 
Demonstration, Jacobi's view of, 4, 10 f., 

65, 71. 
Descartes, 10, 31, 34 f., 43, 48, 53, 66, 

7i, 79- 
Desire, as motive, 82 f. 

Will independent of, 23. 
Dogmatism, 9, 18, 21. 
Dualism, as two-fold truth, 28 f. 

of Jacobi, 8, 15, 19, 24, 56, 58, 75 f. 

of the Sensationalists, 8 f. 

of faith and knowledge, 29. 
Eckhart, 1, 6. 

Empiricism, Relation of, to Jacobi, 7 ff., 
10, 31 f. 

of Jacobi, 17, 33, 51. 

of the Reformation, 20. 

of Locke and Hume, 20. 

The new, 18. 
Experience, as starting-point, 18, 26 f. 
Externality in Kant, 12, 52 f. 
Faith, as used by Hume, 4. 

as giving knowledge, 34. 

as faculty above reason, 38 ff. 

as giving certainty, 39. 

Kant's view of, 70. 



Faith, Kant's use of, 45. 

what it reveals, 46. 
Fichte, 31, 55, 61, 72. 
Freedom, 22 ff., 48. 
Gefuhlsphilosophie, I, 4, 12 ff., 29. 
God, known immediately, 40, 48, 81. 

in older philosophy, 65. 

nature and, 82. 

no proof needed of, 66. 

personality of, 69, 73. 

no development without, 74. 

' things ' and, 78 f. 
Green, 41 n. 
Ground and cause, 76 f. 
Hamann, 4, 13, 19, 36. 
Hegel, 27, 35, 44, 47, 5°, 6 3> 65. 
Herder, 4, 13. 

Hume, 20, 33, 34, 37, 51, 71 f: 
Hume on Belief, 4, 16, 21 f., 52. 
Idealism, 5, 11 f., 32, 51 f., 61 ff. 
'Ideas of Reason,' 37, 40, 70 f. 
Immediacy, 25 f., 40 f., 50. 
Immortality, 2, 30, 31, 48, 84. 
Individualism, Jacobi's, 7, 43, $1. 
Kant, ii f., 14, 21, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 
36, 45, 48, 51, 52, 61, 62, 69 ff., 79. 
Kantianism, 5, 52, 54. 
Knowledge, 22, 36, 57. 
Leibniz, 9, 10. 
Le Sage, 2, 7. 
Lessing, 4. 
Letter to Fichte, 5. 
Life, Jacobi's starting-point, 55 f. 
Limitation, Jacobi's, 50. 
Locke, 20, 33, 34. 
Malebranche, 71. 
Materialism, 7, 61, 64, 67, 75. 
Mathematical method, 10 f., 25. 
Mechanism, 

nature as, 22, 75. 

the world as, 68. 
Mendelssohn, 4, 10. 
Method, of philosophy, 8, 10 f. 

of science, 25. 
Mind as active, 21, 46. 



89 



90 



INDEX. 



Mysticism, I, 6, 14, 35, 40, 49. 
Naturalism, 72, 75. 
Nature, 25, 73, 82. 
Objectivity, in perception, 60. 

of ideals, 80. 
Objects, not constituted by thought, 58. 
On Divine Things, 5, 16, 71. 
0w Afc Attempt of the Critical Philosophy 
to bring Reason to Understanding, 5, 
16, 52. 
Perception, 34 f., 47. 
Personality, 18, 69, 79. 
Pietism, 1, 6 f., 17, 40. 
Plato, 39, 73, 78. 
Problem of philosophy, 12, 18, 25, 29 f., 

39, 51, 65, 71. 
Rationalism, 9, 52. 

Realism, Jacobi's, 5, 11 f., 47, 52, 57, 59, 63. 
Reason, as indwelling spirit, 21 f. 

as faith, 25. 

as intuition, 27, 37 

gives the true, 43, 61 

man's endowment, 41. 
" Refutation of Idealism," 53, 61. 
Reid, 32, 51. 

Religion, Jacobi's view of, 80 f. 
Revelation, 41 f., 82. 
Romanticism, 1, 14 ff., 29. 
Rousseau, 2, 8, 29. 
Salto mortale, 29, 44, 60. 

SCHELLING, 5, 15, 71 72 f. 

Science, as knowledge of nature, 8, 24, 29, 
45 



43- 



f. 



Science, depends an demonstration, 2f 

of spirit impossible, 8, 46. 
Scottish School, 32, 51. 
Sensationalism, 2, 7 ff. 
Socrates, 39, 73. 
Space and time, 53, 62. 
Spener, 6. 
Spinoza, 4, 9, 10 f., 13, 16, 17, 23, 

34, 48, 63, 65, 66 ff., 71, 76, 79. 
Spirit, 8, 24, 57. 
Subjectivism of Kant, 11 f., 31. 
Substance, II, 68. 
Synthetic method, 3] 
Tauler, 1, 6. 
Tetens, 12. 
Theism, Jacobi's, 5, 

Finite intelligence and, 80. 

Kant's, 71. 

objective, 12. 

significance of, 31. 
Thought, as activity of spirit, 22. 

Jacobi's view of, 56. 
Time, 62, 76, 77 f. 
Truth, revealed only by the true, ^. 
Understanding, 27 f., 36 f., 44. 
Unity, only in personality, 22, 78. 
Universe, eternal, 77. 
Voltaire, 2, 8. 
Wilde, 46 f. 
Will, power of, 83. 
Woldemar, 3, 16, 35. 
Wolff, 9, 31. 



'., 08 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



F. H. JACOBI 



c/ 



A THESIS 

Accepted by the University Faculty of Cornell University 
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, May, 1902 



BY 

ALEXANDER W. CRAWFORD, A.M. 



"'"0732 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 



